Gleanings of the Week Ending October 3, 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.

09/23/2026 NASA Boom Year for Desert Blooms – In Western Australia

09/23/2026 Yale Environment 360 This Map Shows Where Warming Has Accelerated - Starting in the 1980s, warming began to accelerate in a few regions, first in the eastern Mediterranean and North Pacific, and later in New Zealand, southeast China, Bolivia, and the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, scientists speculate that efforts to slash pollution have caused warming to speed up. Sulfur dioxide, produced chiefly by coal power plants, blocks sunlight, with a cooling effect. In China, for instance, efforts to slash coal plant pollution have produced both clearer skies and a recent surge in warming.

09/22/2026 Smithsonian Magazine The Human Brain Might Be Made of Two Distinct Nervous Systems That Got Squished Together - The front of the brain, called the forebrain, and the back of the brain, or the hindbrain, form independently during embryonic development. The findings hint that our ancestors had two distinct nervous systems that, over millions of years of evolution, became tightly packed. The discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a Petri dish and study their functions

09/27/2026 Science Daily Scientists found a surprising driver of Alzheimer’s outside the brain - Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration and preserved cognitive abilities, pointing to a potentially more accessible treatment target.

09/25/2026 NWF Blog Leave the Leaves to Attract Birds - Backyard birds may love your feeders, but most of their food comes from foraging in the natural environment. The leaf layer is a great place to forage. Under the leaves hide many food sources: fallen nuts and seeds, insects, and invertebrates. The leaves provide a moist environment where many of these small creatures thrive and hide. 

09/25/2026 BBC Future A mysterious organ in the sperm whale's head gives it the power to sink ships - Sperm whales have a huge head. In fact, their heads make up around a third of their overall body length. Within the forehead is a large fatty, squishy organ called the spermaceti – unique to their species. This organ is filled with an oily substance also called spermaceti. The organ has enough buffering that whales could use their head as a ram without risking damage.

09/28/2026 I’m Plastic Free Best Plastic-Free Apple Watch Bands (Non-Toxic & PFAS-Free) for 2026 - You wear your Apple Watch every single day on the thin skin of your wrist. You sweat in it, and yes, sometimes you also get allergic reactions to the materials of the wrist band. The best plastic-free Apple Watch bands use materials like organic cotton, cork, or stainless-steel alloys instead of standard fluoroelastomer plastic, which is the material most Apple Sport Bands are made from.

09/23/2026 Science Daily The “big one” might not come alone: Two major West Coast faults may strike back to back - The Cascadia subduction zone and northern San Andreas fault may sometimes rupture in rapid succession, according to evidence preserved in 3,100 years of ocean sediments. If such synchronization happened again, several major West Coast cities could face emergencies at nearly the same time. If they both went off together, then you've got potentially San Francisco. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver all in an emergency situation in a compressed timeframe.

09/22/2026 Artnet Hilla Rebay Helped Shape the Guggenheim. Now Her Own Art Is Getting Its Due - We know Hilla Rebay today as the driving force behind New York’s Guggenheim Museum. As co-founder and inaugural director of the institution, her modern taste shaped its collection and her imagination animated its architecture. But her own career as an artist has faded from view. Los Angeles-based Weinstein Gallery will surface a trove of the German visionary’s paintings and collages, placing them in conversation with works by artists she championed, including László Moholy-Nagy, Alice Trumbull Mason, Paul Klee, and Rudolf Bauer. 

09/14/2026 Archaeology Magazine Denisovan Fossils and Possible Tools Uncovered in China - Fossils from at least three Denisovan individuals who lived between 167,000 and 134,000 years ago have been discovered in southwestern China's Bianfu Cave. They were found near butchered animal remains and more than 1,300 tools.