Gleanings of the Week Ending October 08, 2016

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.

What would happen if the world suddenly went vegetarian? – Of course, it’s not likely that the world will suddenly become vegetarian but this article talks about the ‘what if’ and encourages thinking about taking steps to reduce portion side of meats we eat and/or substitute a plant protein for meat in some of our meals.

Hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter’s moon Europa – Another discovery --- and something to look at with the James Webb Space Telescope (to launch in 2018). If confirmed, Europa will be the 2^nd moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes (Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, has jets of water vapor and dust that were discovered by NASA’s Cassini orbiter in 2005).

Our IQs have never been higher – but it hasn’t made us smart – It turns out that IQ is malleable over a lifetime. People that are physically and intellectually active…and are overall healthy…have higher IQs, in general, than people who are not. It does not mean that we are wiser…just that IQ is higher.

Acidity in atmosphere minimized to preindustrial levels – Result from studies of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The human-made acid pollution peaked in the 1960s and 70s and we are not back to the levels in the 1930s.

Tips for creating an introvert-friendly workplace – An article from CIO magazine. Read it as a case study on some things that need to be considered: communication, comfort zones, company culture, and the workplace structure.

New evidence shifts the timeline back for human arrival in the Americas – An archeological site in Argentina…humans were there 13,068-14,064 years ago….that’s earlier than Clovis people in North America (around 13,000 years ago).

The astronomical cost of going to Mars – and staying there – Sustaining people on Mars quickly exceeds getting them there. There is a lot of talk of getting to Mars (i.e. the transportation) and not as much about what would happen once people got there.

How the Electricity Grid Works – An Infographic. In the US there are three grids: The Eastern Grid, the Western Grid, and the Texas Grid – with the Eastern being the largest.

Washing Clothes Releases Thousands of Microplastic Particles into the Environment – Three types of textiles were examined: cotton/polyester, polyester, and acrylic. They all release a lot of very small plastic particles (acrylic releasing the most…cotton/polyester the least). Reduction of emissions will take changes in textile design and/or improved filtration of effluent for these very small particles.

Pumpkin Pie Mousse – I like pumpkin custard – one of the favorite fall desserts around my house – but this is something I am going to try. No cooking!

Fall Beginnings

This past weekend, I volunteered Fall Festival held at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm. It was a misty day. As I drove to the event, I was using the windshield wipers and wondering how many people would show up --- but there were already quite a few people there when I arrived about 11:30 (I wasn’t the 1^st shift of volunteers). I was early enough to take a short hike through the meadow to try out my new camera. I held it so the lens would not get misted…and experimented. One of the first pictures I took was of a cabbage white butterfly that was perched on a flower; I didn’t see it move at all and it had droplets of water on its antennae!

There were lots of spider webs that were made visible by the mist. I didn’t see the spider on this one so maybe they don’t like a web full of water droplets! The sheer number of webs in the meadow – on plant stems, in the grass – was quite large and it occurred to me that they are probably always there but just not as visible when things are dry.

Do you see the bug underneath this thistle flower – using it as an umbrella?

The break in the stone wall allows the paths to connect. I like the area because the rocks are covered with lots of lichen and moss.

The bridge was warped by the storm water surge from the same event that almost destroyed Ellicot City last summer. You can tell that the water was moving under this bridge (left to right)! Before the storm the bridge was straight.

I hiked back to the Nature Center where I was volunteering in the Children’s Crafts area. They made owls with glued on google eyes and stamped feathers (using celery stalks as stamps). There were over 70 children over a 2-hour period!

Only two children make owls with outstretched wings…and one of those was a younger child that decided that using a finger on the stamp pads was more fun that the celery.

And a good time was had by all….

Milkweed Bugs

This time of year there are many stages of milkweed bugs on just about every milkweed plant I look at. They can be anywhere on the plant – seed pods

And leaves are places where they seem to congregate.

Many times there are several different stages of development (based on size and coloration differences). Sometimes the sheds from when a bug made the transition from one instar to the next are visible (the brownish objects in the picture below).

The more mature instars have more obvious beginnings of wings.

The very young have tiny buds where the wings will grow.

Sometimes there is an adult among the group.

In the end they are all enjoying the nutritional bounty of the milkweed seed pod that are just maturing this time of year.

There are so many grouped on the leaves it is hard to fathom how there can be enough food for them all

And leave enough seeds for the milkweed to reproduce itself.

The bugs must overcome the plant’s reproduction by seeds in some cases. The milkweed has a backup plan – underground runners and roots that can come up next year as a clump of clones to try again.

Mt. Pleasant – September 2016

Earlier this month I posted some images of ‘minutes in the meadow’ at Mt. Pleasant – but fall is such a great time around the Howard County Conservancy place that I more to share from other times I was at Mt. Pleasant. The black walnuts are still green but beginning to turn. Their out hull will be oozing black before too long.

The pine trees have their cones – like decorations.

The horse nettles are still blooming

But there are fruits that are forming as well.

The chicory is still blooming too

And hoverflies abound.

But the big showy plant of September is the goldenrod – it is a sweep of yellow in the meadow –

Tall and lush --- providing food for the butterflies. The monarchs need it for their migration southward.

In our area – the fall usually peaks in mid to late October. We have had some leaves falling already – not pretty ones; the early leaf fall has been from dry weather in late summer. We are getting some rain this week but it may to too late to give us a brilliant fall. October will tell.

1994 Nature Study

In the summer of 1994, my daughter was almost 5 years old. She was not big enough for most of our yard work chores but she enjoyed being outdoors. I was reminded of her at that age by a picture I came across in my scanning project. My husband had finished mowing and she and I had gone around picking dandelion flowers that had missed being cut. She had a small basket that she put the flowers in. I started trimming some bushes while she arranged grass clippings and dandelion flowers (and a few other things she found) into an arrangement on the garage floor. After she finished – I went inside to get the Polaroid camera and her father took a picture with his camera too. She was thrilled with the near immediate result of the Polaroid; I’m not sure she ever saw this one that came back weeks later.

What a difference digital photography has made!

Zooming – September 2016

I already did a zooming post earlier this month focused totally on insects --- but there have been so many other good shots that I couldn’t resist another for this month with more than insects in the mix. I am getting a new camera soon so this might be the last set of images with the 30x in optics and digital up to 120x. Let’s start with some plants: crabapples against a clear blue sky. Most of the leaves have already fallen from the tree but I looked around to find some fruit with a leaf nearby.

A flower with its petals still in tubes. Soon they would flatten into more normal looking petals.

A cloud of pink flowers.

Lots of pollen.

Milkweed seeds on the verge of blowing away.

The long central stalk of the hibiscus flower.

And a mushroom that was greenish underneath.

Back to some animals…..this chipmunk had very full cheek pouches. It was probably collecting food to be stored away for winter.

A skipper sunning itself among the dew drops on a large flower.

A bee so focused on the flower that it doesn’t notice my son-in-law’s camera trying to get a close shot (upper left corner). I prefer using the zoom!

A molting bird…maybe a grackle?

A dragonfly.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 24, 2016

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.

World Heritage in the High Seas: The Time Has Come – From National Geographic – pictures and a map of some potential places on the high seas that merit World Heritage status.

Historical analysis examines sugar industry role in heart disease research – A bit of disturbing history….is dietary fat the main culprit when it comes to heart disease? What about sugar and heart disease?

Gentians: part 1, part 2, part 3 – Elizabeth’s series on a particular flower….and not just in Maryland.

Brain’s stunning genomic diversity revealed – Huge insertions and deletions in DNA…surprise.

Scientists Baffled as Hundreds of Dead Horseshoe Crabs Wash Ashore in Japan – Sad…and no definitive reason yet. Theories being investigated include: parasitic infection or disease or oxygen shortage due to higher sea water temperature.

Between a rock and a hard place: biologists unearth sandstone-excavating bees – Bees are amazingly diverse. These are from the west and southwest in the US: Utah, Colorado, California.

Eggs make a comeback – A general overview of eggs in our diet. There is also a link to an article about ‘how to buy eggs.’

How our brain slows down the effects of aging – Elderly people develop a particular selective attentiveness. I wondered if, as we get older, we realize that we are paying more attention to details?

A Newly Explored Undersea Volcano is Teeming with Alien Life Forms – On Earth but very different than what we normally see.

How much do perfumes pollute? – A study of the canals of Venice….looking at the perfumes that are part of products we use daily like soaps, detergents, shampoos and other personal hygiene products. It turns out that the perfumes are in every sample…persistent for the 9 months of sampling. But what impact do they have on the environment – that’s still to be determined.

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge – Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday’s post about the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge….

A plant community that becomes more evident the further south we drove is epiphytes with the Spanish moss being some of the most noticeable. But I took pictures of smaller ones as we walked around the boardwalk of the visitor center.

Flowers are always attention getters too.

Insects are even a bigger draw. Different kinds of bees were competing for flowers. The bumblebees are so big they usually drive the others away!

A long tailed skipper stayed put long enough for me to take a picture too.

The dragonflies looked similar to the dragonflies of Maryland.

We found a dead Polyphemus moth on the ground before we even walked into the visitor center. We perched it on a bush to photograph. It’s a male (large antennae to detect pheromone emitted by the females).

The seed pods on the button bushes in Florida look the same as the ones in Maryland.

And then there was a small tree in the pollinator with seedpods at various stages of maturity…and flowers too – obviously a legume.

When we got to the beach (the wildlife refuge abuts the Canaveral National Seashore), I noticed the sea grapes had color variation in their leaves and also had clusters of fruit.

These plants are planted on the dunes along the shore for stabilization.

There were a few gulls about but they were not as interesting as

The juvenile sanderling that seemed very interested in every piece of seaweed tossed up by the surf.

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge – Part 1

While we were in Florida earlier this month for the OSIRIS-REx launch, we spent a little time at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge although it was too hot to spend as long as we did before and after the Maven launch back in 2013 (posts from November 2013: Roseate Spoonbills, Brown Pelicans, Alligators, Bald Eagles, Osprey, beach). The Black Point Wildlife Drive was not open until mid-September so we 1) stopped at the visitor center, 2) checked the Manatee Observation Deck and the Bairs Cove boat ramp and 3)drove down the Bio Lab Road….and saw quite a lot in a couple of morning hours. I had a hard time narrowing down the pictures I want to share so am doing it in two posts instead of one!

I didn’t see any alligators (it was warm enough that they were not basking on the sides of waterways…they are harder to spot when only their eyes are out of the water) but we did see some reptiles near the visitor center: cooter turtles

And a lizard (that posed on a sign!).

My attention was drawn to leaves. There are so many plants in Florida that don’t grow in Maryland.

And then there were the birds. The osprey seemed to be everywhere. Many times the white head fooled me into thinking the bird was a bald eagle until I took a closer look. One was precarious perched on a pine branch over water near the bridge over the haul over canal between Bairs Cove and the Manatee Observation Deck.

We saw another along the Bio Lab Road…with feathers ruffled from the wind.

The wildlife refuge is right next to Cape Canaveral…can you spot the heron is this picture with the Vehicle Assembly Building in the background? It’s just below and to the left of the building images…stating on a small island of vegetation.

Here its after I zoomed in as much as I could. It’s probably a Great Blue Heron.

There were tri-color herons as well.

Ibis were feeding in the distance.

But the American White Pelicans were by far the most numerous birds that we saw. They winter here and must have just arrived recently. There was a film crew on the Bio Lab Road that was filming the birds as a helicopter swept overhead and caused them to fly up several times. I got a reasonable picture of them in flight as well.

A little further along the road were some black vultures. We saw them soaring every day we were in Florida and, a few times, they were cheekily grouped on the ground. We stopped for them…let them go at their own pace.

More of my Merritt Island photography tomorrow ----

Sinkhole Ponds in Virginia – September 1984

As I continue my scanning project of old slides and pictures, I am recalling again a field trip we took with the Nature Conservancy to sink hole ponds in Virginia. They were located about 20 miles west of Charlottesville. I don’t remember the exact location. All the details I am savoring today are from the pictures themselves and a letter I sent to my sister in mid-September 1984. Here’s a clip of the text from that letter illustrated with the slides I recently scanned.

… sink holes that had been artificially dammed so they contained water, but were still fairly shallow.  They had golden rod and button bushes.  Evidently they had cranberries on one side, but we couldn't get over there without waders. 

The next pond was totally dry, on]y containing water for a short time after a major rain.  It had one lone tree growing right in its center. 

The next one was more of a rounded funnel than a bowl shape.  The very deepest part contains water year round.  A form of grass sprouts, blooms and produces seed right at the water’s edge.  You can tell how fast the water is evaporating by noting how far up the slope the grass is still growing.  Evidently it doesn't last long once away from the water's edge. 

Of course, there is a carpet of peat moss all around the pond and it's very interesting to note the different appearance of the peat as it dries out.  It's very squishy when it’s full of water.  The last pond was my favorite.  It stays full all year since it is fed by springs that bubble up through the peat.  It's quite shallow but has been a pond for over 2,000 years (a core sample has been taken). 

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 17, 2016

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.

Sensory Biology Around the Animal Kingdom – Beyond sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.

A Variety of Ways for Students to Explore National Parks Online – Not just for students….these resources could be worth a look before traveling to a national park or helping to savor the visit after you return.

Proprioception: The Sense Within – The sense of position and movement of our limbs, the senses of muscle force and effect, and the sense of balance --- easy to take for granted, more important that you might think at first.

Six Snapshots of Geoscience Research from National Parks – Our National Parks highlight the value of these special places for more than recreation…they are often places uniquely suited to increasing our understanding of Earth.

Thanks to this man, airplanes don’t crash into mountains any more – Don Bateman’s terrain mapping device....a long development cycle.

Bumblebees Pick Infected Tomato Plants – And does this compensate to offset the costs of viral infection when it comes to seed production from the tomato plants?

The Flower Sense of Hawkmoths – Olfactory receptors in the proboscis….but what attracted mw to the article was the picture of the hawkmoth (made me think of my recent hummingbird moth observations).

Late boneset: A fragrant late-summer pollinator favorite – Thinking about late blooming plants that sustain pollinators into the fall. Late Boneset is one….goldenrod is another!

“Skeleton Flowers” Turn Beautifully Transparent in the Rain – Botanical eye candy from colder regions of Japan and China

The Value of Water in the Nebraska Sandhills – Water is valuable to every environmental niche on Earth…this blog post focuses on detailing water in one type of place. Water percolates down and into aquifers below the root zone of plants!

Road Trip to Florida

We were in Florida last week – for the OSIRIS-REx launch and a few days of touring…more that in upcoming posts. The drive down from Maryland was done in an easy two days with a stop in Florence, South Carolina. The weather was hot so we didn’t stop for any of our usually outdoor activities. We retraced our steps coming back. The first day was very hot but the navigation system routed us to the Beltway around Jacksonville, Florida rather than saying on I-95 and we crossed the Dames Point Bridge. I managed to get my camera out and take some pictures of it.

It’s quite a sight.

I also liked the colorful mass of shipping containers just past the bridge.

We stayed in the same hotel in Florence, South Carolina on that night and I managed to get a sunrise photograph from the window. It was the only sunrise picture from this road trip!

The weather has cooled down a bit and the humidity was not so high for the last day on the road. We lingered a little at one of the rest stops – still in the Carolinas – and I took some pictures of a late blooming day lily

And some grasses swaying in the breeze catching the morning sun.

There was a dragonfly lying on the sidewalk – dead but still relatively intact. The plates of color on the abdomen reminded me of a Mayan turquoise mask.

The thorax was yellow green.

Minutes in the Meadow

It’s the time of year that schools start again – and I’m more of that with the classes for Howard County Conservancy volunteers. I got to Mt Pleasant a little early for one of them to give myself time to spend a few minutes in the meadow. I didn’t have time to go very far but there were plenty of subjects for photography. The dew was still evident on the flowers. Chicory flowers always seem a darker blue before they completely open. I had not notices the little fibers on the calyx before; they catch dew.

Sometimes the chaos of an unfurling flower is what catches my eye. This one was so low to the grown that I almost missed it.

And then I saw some movement in the mass of meadow plants and, with some difficulty, managed to find it and zoomed in enough to figure out what it was. A grasshopper or a Queen Anne’s Lace fruit cluster!

I glanced down near the edge of the path and saw what looked like thorn on a blade of grass. I backed up enough for the zoom on the camera to focus on it. Another grasshopper! I ended up zooming out to get the antennae in the picture. They were very long!

I was pleased to see so much in such a short period of time and in a relatively small area of the meadow.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 10, 2016

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.

Sunflowers Track the Sun, Like Solar Panels – The behavior was reported in scientific literature in 1898. Now there are studies to understand how the plants do it biochemically and physically. I also liked the picture at the beginning of the article.

Ancient air pockets changing the history of Earth’s oxygen – Ancient air trapped in rock salt shows that earth’s atmosphere contained 10.9% oxygen 813 million years ago….about 300 million years earlier than previously thought. It’s not as much oxygen as in our current atmosphere but a lot of organisms did develop during this time period when there was less oxygen.

Healthy Eating, A to Z – How many of these 26 do you already know?

30 Reason Your Next Car Should Be Electric – I’ve been thinking recently that my next car will probably be electric. It’s good to see that there are a lot of reasons this it is a good idea! Item 29 on this list (kids and grandkids and great-grandkids) is high in my rationale.

How comedy makes us better people – Analyzing humor’s role in our culture – in much the same way as we analyze intelligence.

Exploring How and Why Trees ‘Talk’ to Each Other – An interview with Suzanne Simard.

Closest Living Relative to the Dodo Dazzles with Vibrant Iridescent Plumage – A little eye candy and interesting biology in one article.

As lab-grown meat and milk inch closer to U.S. market, industry wonders who will regulate? – A complex issue and it’s not clear if the USDA or FDA will be responsible. The technology is moving forward quickly in the agricultural biotechnology arena. It is challenging to understand it well enough to propose appropriate regulations for public health and safety.

Newly discovered fossils break record, dating back 3.7 billion years ago – Evidence of microbial life found in Greenland (where there are some of the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks). Another article on the same topic from Science Daily can be found here.

Study assesses climate change vulnerability in urban America – Our area got a wakeup call in this arena with the damage to Ellicott City from recent flooding. It happened very quickly, with very little warning. The planning for infrastructure, human populations and local concerns when it comes to climate vulnerability is in its infancy in many parts of the country.

Onions in the Chaos Garden

There are onions blooming around the base of the sycamore in the chaos garden. I cut the green parts as chives when I remember but there have been some that have gone to seed  for the past several years so I have more plants every season.

Now there are enough to get every stage of the flower heads in one photoshoot. They start out with a cluster of buds.

They do not all open at one time (there is a blurry coneflower adding color in the background for this flower head). At first it looks like the flowers are going to be overly crowed.

But then – some of the stems that support the individual flowers elongate.

There still seem to be a large number of buds when the flower head looks like a miniature bouquet.

The new buds hide underneath the flowers that have already opened.

And that is the state of the chaos garden onions in early September!

Zooming on Insects

The last week or so has been a great time for photographing insects. There were skippers enjoying some last season Joe Pye Weed at Centennial Park. I took pictures at different angles and discovered when I got home that there might have been two different types of skippers on the plants.

At home, I checked the milkweeds for insects and could find any adult milkweed bugs like I found a few weeks ago but there are some larval stage milkweed bugs. They develop so quickly that there are at least two stages in this one grouping…maybe three.

On another milkweed there are aphids – again. There must have been something that came and cleaned off a lot of the aphids, but they are back now. Again – there are multiple stages of aphids in this one picture with the whitish ones being the youngest and then look at the different sizes of the yellow ones.

There was a very small insect with a green metallic-looking thorax. Sometimes insects look like little machines.

And a fly on the milkweed – with bristles on the abdomen!

As you can tell – I am having a lot of fun right now using the zoom (optical + digital) in my camera! There is a lot to see out there.

Queen Anne’s Lace in the Fall

Many of the Queen Anne’s Lace plants at Centennial Park are finished flowering and in the fruit cluster stage. I find the clusters as attractive as the flowers. There is still a lot of visual complexity. Some of the clusters are green.

Looking closer you can see the oval fruits beginning to form.

Later they will turn brown….and early harbinger of fall color.

This one has some fruits that are still green…others that are reddish brown.

1979 – Southeast Oklahoma in the Fall

Back in the last 70s and early 80s, we enjoyed a fall foliage camping trip almost every year. I favorite destination was southeastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas….where there were more trees than the area around Dallas. In 1979, we made two trips during the fall. The first one was in September when most of the trees were still green and it was to visit relatives further north than our usual fall stops. But we made a stop at a place just off the highway called Limestone Gap. There was a railway bridge over a stream – that was crumbling even then. Based on the weeds growing on top – maybe the train already was running over a new bridge.

The highway at that time did not have rest stops…so this stream and crumbling bridge made a pleasant stop for a picnic south of McAlester OK. My family had stopped there for years when we were on that stretch of highway. This picture was taken at one of the last times we stopped before the highway was upgraded – there was no longer a ‘Limestone Gap’ sign for the turn off – and we stopped at a fast food restaurant or truck stop further along the highway rather than a ‘scenic’ stop.

Later in the season, we made our annual camping trip. Many of the leaves had already fallen from the trees.

But there was still a golden quality to the forest with a few leaves hanging on and many on the ground – but not enough to cover the rocky floor of the forest.

The golden them was carried with mushrooms

And shelf fungus.

My husband picked the picture below as his favorite and printed it as an 11x14 not long after the trip.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 03, 2016

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.

Edible food packaging made from milk proteins – I’m not sure how this works to reduce packaging since to be edible it would have to stay clean (i.e. another layer of packaging?). Still – it would be great to reduce the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging.

Zika Infects Adult Neural Progenitors Too  and How Zika infects Mother and Baby – Two articles from The Scientist. Zika is a hot research topic right now…and a public health concern.

Research priorities for the field of atmospheric chemistry – The development of a predictive capability to provide foresight into the consequences of rapid changes in the Earth system is need to help in preparation and decision making. Right now the field is focused on observing, learning and discovering for fundamental understanding…so there is data to support attempt to develop a predictive capability.

New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection – The Guaico Culex virus that infects mosquitoes has 5 genes and each gene is individually packaged. A mosquito cell has to have 4 of the 5 packages to be infected. The 5^th package may cause the infection to be potent. Once again – a case that shows how little we really understand about life on Earth.

How Aluminum Changed the World – A little history for the week.

Wildflower Wednesday: Chicory – Like the author of this post – I like chicory. The blue color redeems it from being considered a weed for me!

Invasive Species Spotlight: Canada Thistle – Evidently it was introduced accidently to North America in the 1600s!

Photos of Frozen Flowers Capture the Paradoxical Beauty of Preservation and Destruction – Eye candy for the week….maybe an idea for some photographic experiments for this winter.

Hope for reversing stroke-induced long-term disability – What a boon it would be for an aging population where having a stroke often reduce the quality of life.

Actin Architecture (image) – Filaments in a cancer cell imaged via confocal microscopy.

Milkweed Seeds

One of the milkweeds in out chaos garden is already spilling seeds. One pod was fully open and the seeds were spilling out. There was a little breeze but I didn’t see any of the seeds float away – although they looked ready to go. I took pictures from several angles.  I liked the way the breeze was changing the light on the pod. The seeds look very dry and the white fluff that acts as a parachute to carry them on the breeze away from the parent plant glistens in the sunlight.

Another pod has split open but there was only one seed that had unfurled enough for the fluff to show. The others were still tightly packed in the pod. Next time I am working outside, I’ll take some of the seeds back to the edge of the forest where I’d like to have a stand of milkweed next spring. Once the plants are established they come back year after year.