Gleanings of the Week Ending October 13, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

IGNITE - Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution - the program in Seattle schools that is a best practice for educating young women about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, well documented and is spreading to other school systems. There is a toolkit available.

Prairie seeds - a collection of seed pile pictures - guess what they are! The answers are at the bottom of the post. The rose hips are the only truly easy one!

Fall prairie pictures - from the Prairie Ecologist

Evolution of Milkweed Eating Insects - I actually propagated milkweed at the woods edge in my yard….for the monarch caterpillars!

Doctors Speak out About Unnecessary Care as Cost Put at $800 Billion a Year - As a patient….how does one distinguish the unnecessary care? How many times has a side effect from unnecessary medical treatment created another problem? This is not only expensive…it is also dangerous to health.

Nora Denzel Keynote Speech at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012 - youtube video

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012 wiki - links to information about each talk

Coursera - take the world’s best courses, online, for free

Extreme Weather Photo Contest Winners - From NASA. Shelf clouds, thunderstorm, walls of dust, lightning

Is reading in the dark bad for your eyesight? - It depends. Take a look at a summary of research on the topic.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 15, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Decoding the Black Death: Anthropologist Finds Clues in Medieval Skeletons - how ‘health at death’ can be determined from skeletons…the impact of disease (like the Black Death) on populations (health of survivors, genetic diversity)

Hadley Crater Provides Deep Insight into Martian Geology - craters within Hadley….there is still a lot to learn about Mars

Fungi Need Some Love, Too - Why? They are nature’s recyclers, food, and source of drugs such as antibiotics. We need them.

CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER “TRUFFLES” - these sound decadant but 'healthy' too - put on the list for upcoming holidays if you don’t make them this week!

15 Things I Never Knew About Health & Fitness - from Marlo Thomas

7-Point Action Plan for Repowering U.S. - If the US wants to remain a leader rather than become a follower in the world - we are going to have to start down this path to ‘energy independence’ rather than reverting to the strategy of the 20th century (i.e. heavy dependence on oil and coal)

Pumpkin donuts - these are baked….and sound yummy. I’m going to make them in mini-Bundt pans

Good Food on a Tight Budget - The guide includes a food list (by food group), tips, recipes…and more.

British Health Open for Research - Giving researchers access to the health records of 52 million people in England could prove invaluable for studying disease. Finally - some truly large scale analysis will be done. How many drugs and procedures that are widely utilized now will withstand the analysis?

Eyes: a Window to Diagnosis - A possible quick and easy screening for Parkinson’s, ADHD and FASD…maybe other neurological functional differences.