Gleanings of the Week Ending January 10, 2026

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. (Note: I have changed the format to include the date and source of the article.)

11/9/2025 BBC Seated salsa - the miracle movement to help ease back pain – Wow – easy to do and very effective. I might even be able to do it on road trips….increase the likelihood of no back pain when getting out of the car!

12/30/2025 Clean Technica Maryland’s Largest Solar Project Launches, On Old Coal Mine – In Garret County MD – “helping to preserve our region’s natural beauty while creating new economic value for our residents. It’s a win-win for us and the environment.” Goo for them!

12/29/2025 Yale Environment 360 Sea Ice Hits New Low in Hottest Year on Record for the Arctic - The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis. The Arctic is heating up as much as four times as quickly as the global average, due to the burning of fossil fuels, and this extra heat is warping the world’s refrigerator. We can point to the Arctic as a faraway place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.

12/30/2025 Science Daily Why your vitamin D supplements might not be working - Magnesium may be the missing key to keeping vitamin D levels in balance. The study found that magnesium raised vitamin D in people who were deficient while dialing it down in those with overly high levels—suggesting a powerful regulating effect. This could help explain why vitamin D supplements don’t work the same way for everyone and why past studies linking vitamin D to cancer and heart disease have produced mixed results. (I also learned that dark chocolate is a good source of magnesium from this post!)

12/26/2025 National Parks Traveler Visual Guide Reveals Stunning Fossil Discovery at Lake Powell – A visual guide published this year and compiled by paleontology experts within the National Park System offers a fresh look at paleontological resources across the 13 park units in the State of Utah. It is available online here.

12/19/2025 Smithsonian Magazine Flesh-Eating Screwworms Are Creeping Closer to a Comeback in the United States - Roughly 60 years ago, the United States eradicated the New World screwworm, an insect that feeds on living tissue. A concerted effort led by USDA wiped them out by 1966 by releasing sterile male flies and, since female flies only mate once, this strategy helped diminish their numbers until the population collapsed. The agency estimates the eradication of screwworms saves ranchers $900 million per year in lost livestock. But now, the flesh-eating creature appears to be creeping closer to a comeback. Efforts are ramping up to monitor for screwworms and prepare to fight it back again.

12/17/2025 Archaeology Magazine How did the Roman invasion of Britain impact health? - The health of the women and children declined overall during the Roman period, but mainly among those who lived in urban areas. The decline in health in urban areas can be attributed to overcrowding, pollution, limited access to resources, and devastating exposure to lead in Roman infrastructure.

12/17/2926 The Conversation The US already faces a health care workforce shortage – immigration policy could make it worse - America’s health care system is entering an unprecedented period of strain. An aging population, coupled with rising rates of chronic conditions, is driving demand for care to new heights. The workforce isn’t growing fast enough to meet those needs. For decades, immigrant health care workers have filled gaps where U.S.-born workers are limited. Nationally, immigrants make up about 18% of the health care workforce, and they’re even more concentrated in critical roles. Roughly 1 in 4 physicians, 1 in 5 registered nurses and 1 in 3 home health aides are foreign-born.

12/15/2025 Nature Tracing pollution in the lives of Arctic seabirds – Scientists on Svalbard — the largest island of the Norwegian polar archipelago: there used to be sea ice in the fjord in May when we arrived for the start of the season, but we haven’t seen any sea ice since 2009. They are monitoring the presence of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in the birds. The years long research has shown that some contaminants transfer to the yolks of the birds’ eggs. High levels of PFASs have been found to lower hatching rates and reduce overall survival rates. In particular, PFASs disrupt hormones and lower fertility rates in male birds.

12/14/2025 The Marginalian A Decalogue for the Dignity of Growing Old: Eva Perón’s Revolutionary Rights of the Elderly – Eva Peron identified 10 rights of elderly people in 1948 to be included in Argentina’s Constitutional Reform the following year; the right to assistance, housing, nourishment, clothing, physical health care, moral health care, recreation, tranquility, and respect.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 22, 2025

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.

In This Storied Egyptian City, Rising Seas are Causing Buildings to Crumble – Alexandria, Egypt. Since 2001, 290 building have collapsed as the rising water table weakens soil and erodes foundations. There are other historic coastal cities with the same problem.

Astronomers Discover 128 New Moons Orbiting Saturn, Cementing the Planet’s Title of ‘Moon King’ – The total number of moons of Saturn is now 274….almost twice as many as all the rest of the moons in our solar system combined.

Microplastics could be fueling antibiotic resistance - Microplastics -- tiny shards of plastic debris -- are all over the planet. They have made their way up food chains, accumulated in oceans, clustered in clouds and on mountains, and been found inside our bodies at alarming rates. Scientists have been racing to uncover the unforeseen impacts of so much plastic in and around us. One recent discovery: bacteria exposed to microplastics became resistant to multiple types of antibiotics commonly used to treat infections. They say this is especially concerning for people in high-density, impoverished areas like refugee settlements, where discarded plastic piles up and bacterial infections spread easily.

How the Development of the Camera Changed Our World - From glass plates to paper prints to digital photograph imaging, the photo revolution's intention remains the same—to immortalize our world.

Alphonse Mucha Helped Define Art Nouveau. A New Show Explores His Lasting Influence – Mucha was undeniably revered in his day, when his posters and advertisements were widely disseminated. His posters lined the streets, and his illustrations graced the covers of major magazines. And to feed the public demand for his work, Mucha even produced smaller posters printed in publications, allowing people to bring his ornately detailed lithographs home without having to rely on the luck of finding one in the wild. The special exhibit will be at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, Missouri, April 11–August 30, 2026….maybe I will plan a road trip for next spring!

'You look up and see light coming through': The divers venturing under the ice in the name of science - In a remote corner of Lapland, northern Finland…a lake with 28 in. layer of ice with a hole cut in it. Divers are tethered to the surface using a safety rope, with a handler on the surface communicating with the diver via rope signals. The training here on the frozen lake is practice for work that will be done out on the sea ice of the Arctic and Antarctic, where there are added dangers – large seals sometimes gather at the dive holes, preventing divers from leaving the water. In 2017, Alf Norkko, a professor of marine research at the University of Helsinki, and his team discovered big changes on the seafloor under Antarctic sea ice since their previous diving expedition in the same area in 2009.  "There was a remarkable increase in the abundance of life," he says. Norkko says that he and his fellow scientists are so dedicated to this work because they are aware of the urgency of climate change. At present, there is a race afoot to understand it, and to respond to it.

Grave of Roman Twins Excavated in Croatia – Twins that died between birth and 2 months…placed face to face. Suffered malnutrition before birth. Infant mortality was as high as 30% in Roman societies.

Particulate matter levels in air exceed WHO limits in majority of world's big cities - Fewer than one in five global cities met World Health Organization air pollution standards (for PM2.5) in 2024 with Central and South Asia accounting for the nine most polluted metropolitan areas on Earth. Los Angeles and Ontario, California are the most polluted in the US.  Mayaguez, Puerto Rico had the cleanest air of any metro area around the world. Man-made activities such as fossil fuel burning for transportation, generating electricity and domestic heating, industrial processes, fireworks and smoking were the largest sources of pollutant PM2.5, but that natural sources including wildfires, dust, pollen and dirt also contributed to particulate loads in the air.

China’s First Domestic Cats Took the Silk Road 1,400 Years Ago, New Study Finds - The Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.), from which the oldest cat in the study hails, saw peak activity along the legendary trade network, which boosted the exchange of goods and ideas between China, India, and Persia. It’s not improbable that merchants from the West could have carried cats on their journey to East Asia.

Can Toxic Mining Waste Help Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere? - On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of contamination for decades. Now, a company plans to process the waste to draw CO2 from the air — one of several projects worldwide that aim to turn this liability into an asset. A 2022 report by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory estimated that existing asbestos tailings in Canada and the United States could remove up to 750 million tons of CO2 in total — while also removing an environmental health hazard.