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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 11, 2026

2/23/2026 I’m Plastic Free Watched The Plastic Detox? Your Guide to Reducing Microplastics Exposure - The Plastic Detox is a powerful documentary exposing the hidden health risks of plastics in our homes. As six couples commit to removing plastic from their homes, the experience transforms their families in lasting ways. The documentary uncovers what microplastics are, how their associated chemicals affect our bodies, and what practical steps individuals can take to regain control over their health.

3/30/2026 BBC Salmon sperm to bird droppings: The science behind bizarre skincare trends - While even the most bizarre of skincare routine fads may have some scientific backing, scientists think that options for the next generation of skincare therapies will involve, among other things, finding new ways to optimize collagen supplementation. Other new therapies are exploring novel ways of manipulating the skin microbiome, the populations of invisible microbes that live on our faces and contribute heavily to the inflammation present in our skin.

3/30/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Sharks in the Bahamas Test Positive for Drugs, Including Cocaine and Painkillers - Sharks in the Bahamas are ingesting drugs—including cocaine, caffeine and painkillers. Scientists identified blood contamination in about one-third of tested animals, findings that further highlight how humans are harming marine environments. While the detection of cocaine—an illicit substance—tends to draw immediate attention, the widespread presence of caffeine and pharmaceuticals in the blood of many analyzed sharks is equally alarming.

3/30/2026 ScienceDaily Simple therapies beat drugs for knee arthritis pain relief - Non-drug treatments like knee braces, hydrotherapy, and exercise can significantly ease knee osteoarthritis symptoms. These approaches not only reduce pain and improve mobility, but also avoid the risks tied to common medications.

3/27/2026 NWF Blog Building hope, organizing communities, and strategic planning on Florida’s Coast - To learn more about the Tampa Bay Coastal Master Plan and efforts to use nature-based solutions to adapt to sea level rise and climate change, with resilient strategies like living shorelines, habitat enhancements, and habitat preservation, please visit this site.

3/26/2026 The Conversation Mosquitoes carrying malaria are evolving more quickly than insecticides can kill them – researchers pinpoint how - The mosquito-borne disease malaria kills over 600,000 people annually. Mosquitoes are quickly evolving counterstrategies that make these insecticides ineffective, putting millions of people at greater risk of deadly infection. Mosquitoes today from Ghana to Malawi are often able to survive insecticide concentrations 10 times the previously lethal dose. Genome-scale sequencing remains important to detect new or unexpected evolutionary responses. The risk of adaptation is highest under a continuous, strong selection pressure, so minimizing, switching and staggering pesticides can help thwart resistance.

3/25/2026 CleanTechnica Why Nature-Based Investments Produce Results - Nature-based solutions have the potential to lift a billion people out of poverty, create 80 million jobs, add an additional $2.3 trillion of growth to the global economy, and prevent $3.7 trillion of climate change damages. Investing in biodiversity conservation and restoring ecosystems have a lot going for them.

3/23/2025 NASA A Fault Line in Bloom – Flowers had turned areas around Soda Lake a bright shade of yellow, and by mid-month, they had spread even farther. Yellow wildflower blooms are visible amid the dendritic network of streams flanking the alkaline lake, which dries out completely during drought years. Colors were particularly vibrant across the Carrizo Plain National Monument, even decorating meadows along the zipper-shaped San Andreas Fault with splashes of purple due to blooms of Phacelia ciliata.

3/30/2026 National Parks Traveler Three Florida Reef Corals "Functionally Extinct" Due To Marine Heat Waves - Extinction has claimed staghorn and elkhorn corals, whose distinctive antler-like arms once peppered the sea floor off Florida but now are all but impossible to find thanks to warming waters and disease throughout their coastal habitat. They are “functionally extinct,” meaning they lack numbers and health to survive threats facing them in the wild. It doesn’t mean they are entirely gone. Scientists are keeping the two species alive in coral nurseries, both onshore and offshore. Many facilities are working to preserve them and raise their offspring as just one aspect of efforts to save the Florida Reef, a 350-mile-long collection of reefs besieged by disease and marine heat waves since the 1970s that have robbed the reef of an estimated 98 percent of its live coral cover. Pillar coral was designated functionally extinct in 2020. On a positive note - elkhorn and staghorn corals typically are ready to move from onshore nurseries into the ocean in about 18 months.

3/30/2026 Yale Environment 360 Even a Few Scattered Trees on Farmland Can Be a Boon for Wildlife - ll told, 58 scientists took part in the effort, using on-the-ground surveys, sound monitoring, and satellite imagery to track close to 2,000 species of birds across more than 1,000 forest remnants. They found that a fragment of forest surrounded by farmland might host more than twice as many bird species as a reservoir island of the same size.