Looking for a way to summarize my year in pictures for this last post of 2019, I selected 3 favorite photos from each month – not an easy task for me. Many of them are from at home…some from other places close to home…then Socorro NM and Carrolton Tx. It’s been a good year! Enjoy the slide show….celebrating 2018!
Last week my husband wanted to try out some new camera gear and decided to do it at Centennial Park. I tagged along to do some photography myself. The lake is settling into winter.
I saw three birds on the water.
Canada geese were the most numerous although still a smaller number than I often see. The water was high in the lake and the stone jetty near the boat launch (closed for the winter) was partially submerged. A goose stood on one – like a game of ‘king of the hill’ with the other geese.
There was a female bufflehead was periodically visible. Buffleheads are diving ducks that are very hard to photograph while they are feeding.
I managed to capture a sequence of the bird just after it surfaced…and then it dove again!
The third bird I saw on the water was a female common merganser. This bird was not feeding but quickly swam further away than I could follow with my zoomed lens.
That was it – less that a dozen Canada geese and then two lone ducks!
Walking back toward the car, I photographed some old birds nest fungus. There were still some ‘eggs’ in some of them…but probably thoroughly dried out by now.
There was also a very robust lichen on a dogwood tree. With all the extra rain we have recently the lichens and mosses are bigger and brighter than usual.
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.
From High Above, A New Way of Seeing Our Urban Planet - Yale E360 – Cities – growing and growing. It is mind boggling that urban population has grown from 751 million in 1950 to 4,200 million today.
How changing labs revealed a chemical reaction key to cataract formation: Researchers studying eye lens find a new function for a protein previously thought to be inert -- ScienceDaily – Learning more about the chemistry behind cataract formation….not a treatment yet but better understanding can be the path toward slowing or more targeted treatment of cataracts.
Curious Kids: What are some of the challenges to Mars travel? – A series from The Conversation (in Australia) for children…but interesting to adults too. Kids ask the best questions!
A DOZEN WAYS FAMILIES CAN #OPTOUTSIDE EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR | Children & Nature Network – I’m on a role with the child focused gleanings right now…I would add to the list: find easy access natural spaces (near where you work or live) and visit them as often as possible.
VIDEO: We Hope Your Day Is As Great As This Snow-Loving Panda’s: NPR – Pandas are such a visual treat. This is Bei Bei at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo back in November. My husband and I missed the snow (we were in New Mexico).
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Owls – National Geographic Blog – 2018 was my first sighting of barn owls in the wild…awesome.
Ragweed Is on The Move – National Geographic Blog – Not such a big change in the south….in Kansas City the season is prolonged by 23 days. For those people allergic to ragweed…that is a miserable trend.
Some health related posts: Blood pressure: Early treatment advised by US guidelines has no survival benefits -- ScienceDaily and Your heart hates air pollution; portable filters could help -- ScienceDaily – At least the second one was actionable; I now have a portable filter in my bedroom and I think it is reducing my cat allergy – maybe more.
Aerial photos of U.S. national parks from space – I love national parks. Everyone I have been to has had something spectacular to offer. It’s sad that they are all mostly closed (if the bathrooms and visitor centers are not open….they are closed) for this week (partial government shutdown).
How do different light bulbs work? – in C&EN | Compound Interest – Light bulbs have changed a lot during my lifetime. Hopefully now we are on track to have bulbs that are closer to the natural sunlight spectrum so that the light does not cause eye or sleep problems.
It’s been somewhat cold this month – but no snow yet. I’ve enjoyed photographing our transition to winter using the zoom on my camera to set the frame of the scene and/or to enable me to stay out of the mud (we’ve had lots of rain) or indoors and warm. There is still a little green left…and the sky sometimes seems brighter when its clear and cold. Enjoy the December 2018 Zoom slideshow!
I stood at open sliding glass doors to take some rainy-day pictures last week when I was in Texas. The colors of the wet foliage were bright for such a cloudy day. Even the raw wound from where a big branch had been cut from a tree was colorful.
A squirrel surveyed the yard. I thought the animal might have heard my camera
When it darted off through the treetops.
A few minutes later – another squirrel was on the ground. The face and paws looked lighter, but it might have just been the light.
A couple of days later, the sun was out again….and I got a different perspective of the garden, but it was cold enough that I took the pictures from an open sliding glass door again…quickly to not let the heat escape from the house.
I was in Texas last week (Carrollton near Dallas to be precise). They were experiencing their first round of cold weather. The first morning I got up to early enough to see the sunrise (not hard this time of year).
The garden still had a surprising amount of green I wondered how long it would be before the plants succumbed to frost. There were some that already had dried to brown (leaves and flowers) but the soft greens of oxalis and sedum
And the brighter colors of kale dominated the view.
I took my pictures and hurried back inside…it was cold. Little did I know that the next 3 days would be cloudy…and then wet.
The last Howard County Conservancy fall field trip was a little later than usual this year – December 4th. It was cold…but not wet as so many of the field trips were this season. I bundled myself up in several layers and took a few pictures of Mt. Pleasant before the buses arrived. The flower pot people are dressed up for Christmas.
The pines have delicate ‘flowers’ – some of which will eventually become cones.
Dried seed pods and flowers are all that remains of the gardens…bright colors muted to almost parchment now.
I like the seed pods that still hold a few seeds.
Most of the students came dressed for the cold and I modified the field trip, so we could all keep our gloves or mittens on. I had two very enthusiastic hiking groups and we kept moving to stay warm! It was a good ‘last field trip’ for the season.
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.
Stunning Abstract Aerial Photos of Namibia's Desert Landscape – A part of the earth with almost no vegetation. There are parts of the US that would be just as stark.
Anopheles mosquitoes could spread Mayaro virus in US, other diverse regions -- ScienceDaily – Another mosquito born disease that may increase in North America as the climate warms. There are already mosquitoes capable of transmitting it here – Andopheles species.
Bad molars? The origins of wisdom teeth – I’ve always wondered why so many people must have their wisdom teeth out. All 4 of mine were pulled when I was 19 because they were impacted. It turns out that eating a crunch/chewy diet when we are young may help the jaw grow long enough to accommodate these late molars. Wish I would have known that; I might have fed my daughter a bit differently. Too late now.
Climate Smart Farming CSF Climate Change in Your County and Climate Smart Farming – Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions – The first link is a county by county look at the history of temperature and precipitation in the Northeast. The second it about the research being done to help farmers plan for extreme weather events…that have become more common in recent years.
How tracking people moving together through time creates powerful data – A discussion of how cohort data is helping us understand health and disease. The example used in the article is the Framingham Heart Study.
Air Pollution from California Wildfires 60 Times Above Safe Limit - Yale E360 – Air quality is impacted by fires. In areas where the frequency of fires is increasing, fire may overtake all other kinds of air pollution for a time.
Can Tourism Save the Ocellated Turkey? – Cool Green Science – What an unusual looking bird! It’s a tropical turkey (Mexico, Belize and Guatemala) that behaves like the North American Wild Turkey.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: November – National Geographic Blog – And more birds.
Forage Wild Nuts for Your Holiday Feast – Cool Green Science – Nuts native in our forests. Too bad the American Chestnuts are no longer plentiful…maybe some of the recent hybrids will survive to repopulate our forests.
BBC - Future - A 'samurai' swordsmith is designing a space probe – Creating corers to use for sampling an asteroid using metallurgy learned making samurai swords.
The Howard County Conservancy organized a winter hike for its volunteers last week on the Trolley Trail (Trolley Trail #9 near Ellicott City/Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum). We were celebrating the end of another fall field trip season. About 40 people met in the Banneker parking lot and headed out.
The connecting trail from Banneker to the Trolley Trail was through the forest and very muddy. There was an Osage orange tree that had dropped its fruit recently. Most of the fruit look pristine. When I got home, I did some research and discovered that the fruit is not eaten except sometimes by squirrels. One theory is that the fruit was eaten by large mammals that are now extinct (ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon) and that these animals would have spread the seed. Now the tree is propagated by people for its wood and as windbreaks.
We headed north on the Trolley Trail first. I didn’t take many pictures because I was so busy trying to keep up with the group. It was the same the last time I was on the Trolley Trail in 2015 with my Master Naturalist class (posted about it here).
There was some stream restoration (and maybe something else since there is infrastructure like sewer lines in the streambed) that was active next to the trail. The stream did look more scoured than the last time we were in the area.
We reached the end of the trail at the north and retraced our steps…passing the trails to Banneker to continue south on the Trolley Trail.
We got to the part of the trail that was damaged in the last flood. Repair work was not complete, so we stopped before getting down to Ellicott City; I turned around and took a picture back along the trail. The asphalt of the trail was damaged by the flood; the asphalt edges were uneven, and pieces were missing.
There were bright green Christmas fens on the cliff to the right
A little further back up the hill, winter trees looked good against the sky. It’s easy to pick out the sycamores this time of year.
A waterfall was scenic rather than roaring. I thought more about what it must have been like during the flood to sweep away asphalt a little further down.
We’ve gotten so much rain this fall/early winter that the moss is thick and bright green – like a carpet.
We made the muddy trek back up to Banneker to retrieve our cars…and head for lunch with healthy appetites.
One morning recently, it was warmer (in the 40s and warming to the 50s) and the forest was full of fog.
The forest layers look different. The forest’s edge that is only a neighbor’s yard away disappears in the mists making it harder to determine distance. Rather than lemon light of just after sunrise, everything is shades of bluish gray.
The forest does not look as friendly in the fog. The birds were staying quiet even though it was their normal time to be active.
There is a coldness to the scene that belies the warmer temperature and is not comfortable – except from the warmth of my office – which is where I was standing to take both pictures through the window. It was a good morning to enjoy being indoors.
A father and son - Ludwig and Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach – produced 24 volumes of the Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae of which Internet Archive has 20 available here. The father is better known for his glass sea creatures and Henrich Gustav Reichenbach is better known for his work on orchids. Still – the illustrations in these volumes are colorful and more like traditional botanical prints in the 1800s – with the central plant in color and plant parts drawn in available space around that depiction.
The colors look a little faded….but that may have been the way they were originally. They still are enough to perk up a cold winter day.
Gustav Hegi was a Swiss botanist that worked in Germany for most of his career. He is best known for editing Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa from 1908 – 1931 (he died in 1932) writing approximately a third of the content during those years. I started with his earlier work – Alpenflora – which is available from the Internet Archive here. The first edition was published in 1905; the edition available on Internet Archive is from 1922.
The botanical illustrations are grouped on the pages. My favorite is probably the one for pines…but the groups of flowers are appealing too – not as bouquets but how the author made use of the whole page to maximize the plants he could document.
The colors on this scanned copy appear to be very good. It’s a good book to enjoy on a winter day.
It was another big month for botanical print books….27 added to the big list (here) and listed in this post.
I’ll write a little more about some of the books in later posts. Today’s post is a slide show of the 27 sample images and then the list of books. There are over 1500 books in the big list of digital eBooks available online free of charge. All the books for this month are from the Internet Archive.
Westafrikanische Kautschuk-Expedition, 1899/1900 * Schlechter, Rudolf * sample image * 1900
Alpenflora; die verbreitetsten Alpenpflanzen von Bayern, Österreich und der Schweiz * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1922
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V1 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1850
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V2 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1838
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V3 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1839
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V4 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1840
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V5 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1841
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V6 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1844
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V7 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1845
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V8 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1846
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V9 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1847
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V10 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1848
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V11 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1849
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V12 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1850
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V15 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1853
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V16 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1854
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V19 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1904
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V20 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1903
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V21 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1867
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V22 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1862
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V23 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1899
Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V24 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig; Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1899
Xenia orchidacea V1 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1858
Xenia orchidacea V2 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1874
Xenia orchidacea V3 * Reichenbach, Heinrich Gustav * sample image * 1900
Refugium botanicum V4 * Saunders, William Wilson, Reichbach, Heinrich Gustav, Baker, John Gilbert * sample image * 1871
Botanische Ergebnisse * Wawra, Heinrich, ritter von Fernsee; Krempelhuber, August von; Reichenbach, Henrich Gustav, Seboth, J. * sample image * 1866
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.
Parts of the Ocean Floor Are Disintegrating—And It's Our Fault | Smart News | Smithsonian – Ocean acidification has a downside – already.
Drought Persists in the Southwest – The drought had been long…like the one in the 1950s…but there are a lot more people living in the region now than there were in the 1950s. 7 states have drafted drought contingency plans.
Body clock researchers prevent liver cancer growth in mice -- ScienceDaily – Our circadian clock has a broader role that just the sleep/wake cycle.
Get a New Perspective on Prague With These Spectacular Drone Photos – A city at sunrise. Hopefully the drone didn’t awaken anyone.
Floating Solar Is Best Solution for Colorado Town’s High Electric Bills | CleanTechnica – A small town with limited available land is installing solar panels over its waste water plant.
Which country is best to live in? Our calculations say it's not Norway – Two metrics are compared. Using the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) – Norway is ‘best.’ But there are issues with that indicator. The Human Life Indicator (HLI) has Hong Kong at the top…with Norway at 9. The US is 10 on the UN HDI but falls to 32 on the HLI scale largely due to lower longevity and high inequality in ages of death when compared to other countries like Canada (which was 10 on the UN HDI index and 17 on the HLI scale). Maybe these indexes are not that useful for individuals but may be helpful in comparing the broader implications for government actions of all 189 countries analyzed.
Punctuated earthquakes for New Madrid area, Missouri, U.S. -- ScienceDaily – The 1811 and 1812 earthquake is well known…but what about the earlier ones? Recent analysis shows quakes around 1450 AD, 900 AD and 2300 BC.
How do pregnancy tests work? | Compound Interest – They’ve only been around since the 1970s – biotech on a stick!
BBC - Future - Why we are living in the age of the chair – Furniture that has changed lives …relatively recently in human history.
Florida monarch butterfly populations have dropped 80 percent since 2005 -- ScienceDaily – A 37-year study of Florida where the monarchs come up from Mexico to recolonize much of the east coast. No wonder we are not seeing as many in Maryland when the numbers in Florida have dropped by 80%.
Last week, the Howard County Conservancy hosted a Weather Conference for representative 6th grade students from 10 middle schools in the county….about 100 students with their teachers.
It was sunny…but cold with wind gusts up to 50 mph. The plan to have students interact with tree experts while they worked on a large tulip poplar was nixed because of the potential of branches falling with the higher winds.
I was bundled up and outside for most of the conference – directing groups of students to their sessions and directing small groups to the County’s Emergency Services Command Unit. When all was quiet, I took a few pictures. I like the colors of the ferns as some fronds succumb to the cold.
There was a pine cone that seemed to be glowing from within because of the way the sun was shining on it.
The tulip poplars are releasing their seeds.
I am always surprised when I see the heron sculpture. I know it’s there but somehow forget.
There were some small branches torn off by the buses making the tight turn after they let the students off close to the building.
There were two things blooming: a witch hazel where most of the petals had already fallen (it will be forming seed pods) and some unknown flower that was in the flower bed near the flower pot people. The flower is probably warped by the cold but is still a welcome bit of color in the wintery landscape.
By 1 PM the students were climbing on buses and the clean up of the big room was underway.
This is last post about our trip to New Mexico and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (unless my husband eventually wades through his photos and provides me some good owl pictures…or photos from when he went to the Very Large Array). Our last field trip of the festival was with a refuge biologist…to talk about endangered species they are providing habitat for. We spent the most time on the New Mexico Meadow Jumping Mouse which are already hibernating in November. Winter is the time of year when the refuge managers tweak the habitats to help the endangered species; for the mouse they provide areas for day nests, maternal nests, food (the mice like seeds on stalks), saturated soils. The mice can swim the irrigation canals but have problems climbing up steep banks…and avoiding the bull frogs there that can eat them!
We saw a Great Blue Heron in an area that will be reworked with the mouse in mind and it will be better for other wildlife as well.
The refuge has milkweed….and supports monarchs in season. The pods looked a little different than the common milkweed we have in Maryland…but I knew it was a milkweed relative as soon as I saw it.
The Southwest Willow Flycatcher is also a species they manage for. The bird will nest in salt cedar but the invasive plant is a fire hazard (burns very hot and fast); the refuge is removing it and encourages the native willows to return. That is the natural progression from grassy meadows in the area so there is some balance to helping the mouse (that needs meadow) and having good stands of willows for the flycatcher.
We went back to a part of the refuge not on the wildlife loop and saw turkeys.
One jumped over an irrigation ditch….the others went down into the ditch and back up rather than making the jump!
This field trip was the most detailed discussion of the festival about the behind the scenes work done on the refuge for the wildlife that makes this place home – for the whole year or just for part of the year.
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 to feed a cat: Consensus statement to the veterinary community: Reducing stress-related eating problems -- ScienceDaily – Puzzle feeders and putting food in different places….make meal time more interesting!
Examining Grad Student Mental Health | The Scientist Magazine® - There are a lot of stressors during graduate school….and many students become depressed or develop other mental health issues. Students, faculty and university administrators are noticing that more needs to be done to help grad students through the challenges of this phase of their education.
Why Fall Color Has Been So Meh in Parts of the U.S. This Year | Smart News | Smithsonian – This article came out a few weeks ago….just getting around to putting in the gleanings. The explanation of why our area had such a lack luster fall is interesting and it might become the norm as the area gets wetter and warmer.
BBC - Earth News - Legless frogs mystery solved – Predatory dragonfly nymphs eat legs of tadpoles! This is an article from 2009…but it was news to me. We find dragonfly nymphs in almost all the streams and rivers around where I live…but I haven’t seen any legless frogs.
2 Solar Ovens Reviewed | CleanTechnica – I wonder how many people living in their RV or travel trailer make use of this type of oven to minimize propane and/or electricity usage.
Large-Scale Tar Production May Have Fueled Viking Expansion - Archaeology Magazine – Tar to waterproof ships. I was reminded of the ‘Connections’ series that often showed how a key technologic advance enabled something historically significant.
Yellowstone streams recovering thanks to wolf reintroduction -- ScienceDaily – The willows are growing taller along the banks of streams, making the banks more stable…since the wolfs are back and impacting elk browsing.
Gaudí's El Capricho, an Early Gem Located in North Spain – It’s hard to see it as a place that people would really live!
How invasive earthworm feces is altering US soils -- ScienceDaily – Asian jumping worms are changing the soils of the Midwest and East Coast of the US….and not for the better.
Why did Tutankhamun have a dagger made from a meteorite? – When Tutankhamun died, iron was rarer than gold. The Egyptians did not know how to process iron from ores…but they did know that iron meteorites came from the sky which might have made the material symbolic for them. Objects made from it would have been reserved for high-status people.
The last day of November. The month has been a busy one and I enjoyed selecting 13 images from when I enjoyed the zoom feature of my camera the most. The picks include fall leaves, a sunset, cranes grooming/snoozing/waking up, screwbean mesquite seeds, agave, a pruned prickly pear stem, barrel cactus thorns, cranes in the early morning, cranes in golden light with snow geese, northern mergansers in action, the moon, a snow goose feather, and some milkweed seeds.
And now we forge ahead into December and another month with a lot of the calendar.
After the Point and Shoot Photography field session, I headed to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge's Desert Arboretum. The entrance was hidden by the large tents put up for the festival expo and a classroom, but I managed to find it. There was already a larger group than I expected for the tour. The garden has been developed over many years by botanists and horticulturalists from seeds. I didn’t take many pictures during the tour since there were so many people --- waiting until the area was quiet again afterward. Most of the plants were cacti and agave; I took two pictures that were other types….the legume type plant for the color of the flowers and the other for the fibrous tendrils.
Now to the cactus. There were several kinds of prickly pear – many that still had fruits. The horticulturist talked about the various kinds of spines and that some were so fast growing that they had to be pruned. I noticed one that had been pruned and that spines had grown on the cut surface – probably to keep animals from borrowing into the soft flesh of the rest of the plant.
The barrel cacti are colorful – fruits and spines. One specimen had yellow spines and fruits. Barrel cactus have been collected by so many people as whole plants rather than just the seeds which has caused some to become almost extinct in the wild…but prevalent in gardens. They evidently grow easy enough from seeds…with patience.
There were several kinds of cholla. My favorite had red fruits.
The agaves have prickles on their edges and a sharp point on the end. There was a century plant that had bloomed two years ago but didn’t produce any seed since there was not another century plant nearby to cross pollinate it. The parent plant died after it bloomed but there is a ‘pup’ coming up under the dried parts of the parent plant…a little clone that will maybe grow up to bloom.
The garden also is popular with birds because of the feeders and the plants. There are white-crowned sparrows,
The birds were not around during the tour….but came back as soon as the crowd of people were gone.
As I left the arboretum, I saw the sculpture of the crane nearby. Once the expo tent is gone – it will be easier to spot.
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.
Drug pollution concentrates in stream bugs, passes to predators in water and on land: Animals that eat insects in or near streams at risk of being dosed with pharmaceuticals -- ScienceDaily – Wow – the existence of macroinvertebrates in our local rivers is an indicator of water quality (the focus of the field trips with high schooler’s I’ve been doing in recent years) but those same macroinvertebrates are probably getting a healthy dose of pharmaceuticals from the water…the fish that eat them act as concentrators….and some of those fish are eaten by people. I hope reserarchers in the US are doing similar studies to the one described in this article. It would also be good if pharmaceutical companies would develop drugs that were not excreted in a still active form.
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Flocks – National Geographic Blog and Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Seed Eating Birds – National Geographic Blog – Two bird photograph collections for this week’s gleanings. Enjoy!
RIP Kepler: NASA’s exoplanet-hunting space telescope is finally dead - MIT Technology Review – The Kepler mission that discovered 2,662 exoplanets in our galaxy finally ran out of fuel. There is already a new satellite picking up the mission and the James Webb Space Telescope will launch in 2021.
Premature Birth Report Cards | March of Dimes – Only one state gets an ‘A’ – and many areas of the country are getting worse when it comes to premature births.
High levels of previously unsuspected pollutant uncovered in homes, environment -- ScienceDaily – An organophosphate that is known to be toxic was a surprise find in household dust…more study needed on its impact on humans that live with it at that level. The chemical is used as a flame retardant or plasticizer in consumer products…and may also form as other chemicals degrade.
Wildlife Populations Have Shrunk by 60 Percent Since 1970 | The Scientist Magazine® - The impact of less and less space for habitat for any species other than those directly related to humans.
BBC - Future - Why the flu of 1918 was so deadly – There have been flu strains that have been just as contagious as the 1918 strain…but none as deadly.
Infographic: What Makes a Brain Smart? | The Scientist Magazine® - There are several models that are being studied.
11 Wildly Colored Moths to Brighten Your Day – Cool Green Science – Most of our moths are in cocoons for the winter. There are several of these that I’ve seen on Maryland…will be looking for them next spring.
Owls help scientists unlock secret of how the brain pays attention -- ScienceDaily – A study using barn owls to figure out how the brain chooses what most deserves attentions.
Copyright © 2025, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2025 Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Powered by Squarespace.
