culture — 2015 — The 21st Century Matriarch

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.

Pollinator Partnership Planting Guides - Planning a garden? How about giving the pollinators in your area a boost too? This site has a planting guide for ‘ecoregions’ in the US - accessed by entering your zipcode!

A Wet and Wild look Inside the 'Mushroom Houses' Of a Fungi Farm - Ever wonder how mushrooms you buy in the grocery store are grown? This post includes a short video. If we had household gardener robots - would you grow mushrooms as well as vegetables?

The Surprising, Depressing Reason Why City-Dwelling Robins Sing at Night - When I saw the picture at the front of this post, my first thought was “that’s not a robin.” But it is - a European robin. I was thinking of the North American variety. It is disturbing that our lights are messing up circadian rhythms - our own and other organisms.

What is the oldest city in the world? - It is surprisingly controversial. How many of the possibilities in the article have your heard about before?

Deconstructing mental illness through ultradian rhythms - A study that suggests that regular meals and early bedtimes may lead to a better life and prevent the onset of mental illness. The study discovered a new dopamine-based rhythm generator. The full paper is available here.

Retracing the roots of fungal symbioses - Mycorrhizal fungi live on the roots of host plants where they exchange sugars that plants produce for mineral nutrients that fungi absorb from the soil. It is hard to visualize - and often not well understood. Now genomics is being applied. Climate change will put whole new stresses on symbiotic relationships. I hope the knowledge gained from this type of research will help us maintain or increase food production as the environment changes.

Liquid Biopsy - Fast DNA-sequencing machines are leading to simple blood tests for cancer - There are some technologies that are so appealing…that you wish they were already available. But it is not easy. So far - the work is for specific types of cancers. The ability to do faster DNA sequencing is improving the prospects.

Ocean circulation change: Sea level spiked for two years along Northeastern North America - Climate change and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)…most of the models predict a weakening of the AMOC over the 21st century and it appears that there was changed in the 2009-2010 time frame.

Computational Anthropology Reveals How the Most Important People in History Vary by Culture - This study looked at articles about significant people in the English, German, Chinese and Japanese language versions of Wikipedia as a data source.

These Brilliantly Colored Bolivian Buildings Look Like Alien Spaceships - Wow! Almost too much color…but certainly different than the majority of buidlings.

Only two courses in progress for me right now! It takes a lot of will power to not sign up for more; there are competing activities this month: travel and classroom-based courses. Here are the two that will keep me busy in February.

Circadian clocks: how rhythms structure life (from Ludwig-Maximilians - Universitat Munchen (LMU) is off to a good start with a mix of history of the research and vocabulary. It’s a topic that is interesting and has lots of implications for health and well-being.

The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold, and Conservation (from University of Wisconsin-Madison) started off by having student pick an avatar that reflected their perspective of the course topic. I chose ‘naturalist;’ it will be interesting to see the demographics of the other students in the course. I like the way the instructors are using surveys and probing questions along with the typical MOOC videos, reading list, and discussion forums.

Two courses finished in January:

Recovering the Humankind’s Past and Saving the Universal Heritage (from Sapienza University of Rome) was a more philosophical course than I expected. It included discussion of the science/technology of archaeology and how it developed over time which is what I expected. But the more thought provoking parts of the class were about the concept of ‘universal heritage’ and why it is important; the relationship of wars and destruction of material culture of the past is striking. It happens alongside the human lives lost and plight of refugees in Syria and Iraq.

Origins - Formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Life (from University of Copenhagen) was a very broad course taught by a team of people from the Natural History of Denmark. It was a good update on what has been discovered since I was in college in the 1970s. Scanning Science Daily over the years helps - but it was refreshing to get a fresh update that tied it all together in an organized way.

As usual - I thrive on having some new topics to learn about and Coursera is a prime avenue for that. Hurray for Coursera!