Gleanings of the Week Ending December 27, 2014

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 the Ancient Romans Made Better Concrete Than We Do Now - Article include the ‘how’ plus some information about how the scientists worked out the details. Roman concrete is ‘better’ in terms of durability and its production releases a lot less carbon into the atmosphere.

The Greenland Ice Sheet: Now in HD - The article is a story from Ohio State University. Some of the imagery is available here.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #74 - As usual - I can’t resist looking through these collections of bird pictures.

The Complete History of Earth in One Tidy Infographic - As usual for infographics…lots of data packed into one page. It is worthwhile to read the text then expand the infographic to take a closer look. I am taking the Origins course so it was a nice coincidence that this graphic came out recently.

Top 10 Public Health Stories of 2014 - We are getting to the end of the year and a number of sites are compiling top stories. This one is about public health.

Over two hundred interesting new species in 2014 - We are still finding a lot of new species in the world - even while we know species are going extinct too. How will we ever know the magnitude of the extinctions when we don’t even know all the species on Earth?

Mosaic Design Gets Assist from Robotics and Enterprise Software - I’ve always enjoyed mosaics and now it appears that robots are being used to create them. Will that make them less expensive (and thus more popular)? I hope we see more mosaics in public places - and in homes too. I’ve noticed several airports with mosaics (one of the newer terminals at DFW and Tucson).

Photography in the National Parks: Looking Back On 2014 - So many good places to take pictures…

2014’s Big Advances in (Biological) Science - A list from The Scientist.

A Video Tour of Yellowstone National Park - A 5 minute video about the geysers of Yellowstone.  It’s a reminder to go back to Yellowstone - soon.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 12, 2014

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 baby names spread across the US - interactive map - What fun! The map is set with a search box (enter a name) and then the historical preference for that name by state begins to play.  Some names spike and then ebb….others stay about constant.

Geothermal Heat Melting Road Surface of Firehole Lake Drive in Yellowstone National Park - Wow! I’m sure we probably drove this rode when we vacationed in Yellowstone. Hope they can figure out how to fix the road.

Fossil Interests Attack Clean Energy Politics: State-By-State Map - The ‘fossil interests’ would be appreciated more for delivering quality in their own products (reducing costs, reducing or eliminating environmentally damaging byproducts, etc.) than when they attempt to trash their competition.  American consumers are getting savvier all the time about how energy costs come about.

Rewriting the history of volcanic forcing during the past 2,000 years - New data from detailed analysis of Antarctica ice cores about volcanic sulfate emissions in the Southern Hemisphere over the past 2000 years is feeding into climate module simulations. The research was done with 26 cores from 19 sites and has taken more than a decade of collaborative ice core collection.

The Alien Brains Living on Planet Earth - Learn something new…about octopi.

Never-Before-Seen Photo of Europa Shows Rivers of Red Ice - A natural wonder than could pass for a work of art!

Babies born to healthy moms worldwide are strikingly similar in size - Focusing on baby born to health, well-educated and well-nourished mothers….this was a large study too: 60,000 pregnancies from 8 urban areas around the world (Brazil, China, India, Italy, Kenya, Oman, the UK, and the US).

Made from History - A site started in May 2014 that collects and organizes historical materials. The main collection areas are World War I, World War II and Civil Rights but there is a search capability as well. I did a search for ‘Little Bighorn’ and article called ‘The Top 7 Military Mistakes in History’ was the result.

Radio-burst discovery deepens astrophysics mystery - There is still a lot to learn about the universe….in this case, the new data confirms observations from the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (there had been speculation that it was a fluke of the Parkes instrument rather than an actual observation prior to this new observation from Arecibo).

Mutations Pervade Mitochondrial DNA - More than 500 point mutations in mtDNA have been implicated in diseases….and there may be a linkage to aging as well. This is deservedly a hot area for further research.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 12, 2014

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.

Blood test could detect solid cancers - Another discovery that started with bioinformatics. It seems like the biological research arena is exploding with findings that are teased out of ‘big data.’ Biological research has met the computer age!

Viewing Nature’s Beauty through a New Lens - Watch the 4 minute video from Louie Schwarzberg imbedded in this post. I liked the bats and cactus sequence the best!

Yes! Yellowstone is a Volcano - A set of 3 videos. They were filmed in 2009 but I just found them. I remember a decade ago when we visited Yellowstone and my daughter being intrigued that is was a ‘super volcano.’

The Gamification of Education - Infographic that includes a timeline of gamification technology applied to education

Find the Closest National Park with This Handy Map - A handy map for planning a US National Park vacation. And just to add some incentive - a post about macro photography in the National Parks.

Global Air Quality Crisis - It is estimated that 7 million people died in 2012 due to air pollution. That makes air pollution the highest environmental risk on the planet.

Senior Discounts (list 1 and list 2) - Two lists posted by Feisty Side of Fifty/Baby Boomer Women. Some of them start at 55…many more at 60….and more at 65.

Jane Goodall: How she redefined mankind - An interview of Jane Goodall at 80.

New York Public Library Releases Thousands of Historic Maps to the Public - Yet another example of the revolution in libraries. They are making the content of their fragile historical collections that used to be accessible to very few people available to anyone with access to the Internet because high quality digitization has come to the fore.

You'll Never Look at Pond Water the Same Way after Watching This Video - There are so many good videos in my list this week. This one encourages me to collect water from the nearby river….and take a look through the microscope!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 1, 2014

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.

Abdominal fat accumulation prevented by unsaturated fat - Just another indicator that thinking about all kinds of fats as ‘all the same’ is probably not a good idea. The unsaturated fats generally come from plant based foods and fatty fish.

Are bookshelves becoming obsolete? - What do you think? I have started reading a lot more books in electronic form than I do in physically printed form….and I’ve given away all the books I don’t need for reference; the old video tapes are gone too. So I have some empty book cases at this point but I find myself using some of the shelves for other things: the bag of shopping bags and a support for a large garden flag hung from an upper shelf by weighting the flag’s upper edge with unused candle holders. I’m not getting rid of them any time soon because I anticipate moving at some point and needing the storage options they would offer. They are not obsolete….they are just shelves that no longer hold books!

How wolves can alter the course of rivers - TED video about the wolves in Yellowstone National Park. It is an ecosystem story.

The symmetry of citrus is a beautiful thing - I like the colors of the fruit….and then the later collections of eggs, beans, and leaves too.

Where Do People Spend the Most of Their Paycheck on Housing? - (for the US) Find out how your state compares.

Americans Want Antibiotic-Free Chicken, and the Industry Is Listening - Good! But in the meantime - I have switched to organic chicken products because that is the closest to sustainable farming practices (i.e. I want them to go beyond anti-biotic free….I want chicken raised in a way that is not damaging the environment.

Daily Overview - A new picture from above every day! 

Infographic about Personalized Learning - I still not sure I understand how Personalized Learning will work for all students because it seems to depend on all students having the desire for self-directed learning….and I’m not sure that is something that can be assumed. Still - I’m going to follow this series of infographics to learn more about the approach. It is appealing to move away from the factory as the model for schools…but is this best alternative model?

New Water Heater Flies Past Crowdfunding Goal - Something to look into when my old hot water heater needs to be replaced.

'Microbial Pompeii:' 1,000-year-old plaque preserves bacteria, microscopic particles of food on skeleton teeth - I am taking a class on Roman Architecture so this blurb caught my attention - but it wasn’t about Pompeii….it was about a study that looked at dental calculus (plaque) that was dated from about the same time as Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius. The plaque provided a window into the diet and microbes of the people living at that time.