Category: Culture

There’s more to water than one might think.

This post attracted me and I wanted to share it with you.

Here in Oregon we are lucky because the ground water is of a high quality and there is plenty of it. At home we drink our water straight from our well without any filtering or chlorination. Have been doing that ever since we moved in back in 2012.

But water is a much deeper subject than I tend to think of and this article is an in-depth review of the topic. It is an article from The Conversation.

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Water in space – a ‘Goldilocks’ star reveals previously hidden step in how water gets to planets like Earth

The star system V883 Orionis contains a rare star surrounded by a disk of gas, ice and dust.
A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), CC BY

John Tobin, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Without water, life on Earth could not exist as it does today. Understanding the history of water in the universe is critical to understanding how planets like Earth come to be.

Astronomers typically refer to the journey water takes from its formation as individual molecules in space to its resting place on the surfaces of planets as “the water trail.” The trail starts in the interstellar medium with hydrogen and oxygen gas and ends with oceans and ice caps on planets, with icy moons orbiting gas giants and icy comets and asteroids that orbit stars. The beginnings and ends of this trail are easy to see, but the middle has remained a mystery.

I am an astronomer who studies the formation of stars and planets using observations from radio and infrared telescopes. In a new paper, my colleagues and I describe the first measurements ever made of this previously hidden middle part of the water trail and what these findings mean for the water found on planets like Earth.

The progression of a star system from a cloud of dust and gas into a mature star with orbiting planets.

Star and planet formation is an intertwined process that starts with a cloud of molecules in space.
Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF, CC BY

How planets are formed

The formation of stars and planets is intertwined. The so-called “emptiness of space” – or the interstellar medium – in fact contains large amounts of gaseous hydrogen, smaller amounts of other gasses and grains of dust. Due to gravity, some pockets of the interstellar medium will become more dense as particles attract each other and form clouds. As the density of these clouds increases, atoms begin to collide more frequently and form larger molecules, including water that forms on dust grains and coats the dust in ice.

Stars begin to form when parts of the collapsing cloud reach a certain density and heat up enough to start fusing hydrogen atoms together. Since only a small fraction of the gas initially collapses into the newborn protostar, the rest of the gas and dust forms a flattened disk of material circling around the spinning, newborn star. Astronomers call this a proto-planetary disk.

As icy dust particles collide with each other inside a proto-planetary disk, they begin to clump together. The process continues and eventually forms the familiar objects of space like asteroids, comets, rocky planets like Earth and gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn.

A cloudy filament against a backdrop of stars.

Gas and dust can condense into clouds, like the Taurus Molecular Cloud, where collisions between hydrogen and oxygen can form water.
ESO/APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO)/A. Hacar et al./Digitized Sky Survey 2, CC BY

Two theories for the source of water

There are two potential pathways that water in our solar system could have taken. The first, called chemical inheritance, is when the water molecules originally formed in the interstellar medium are delivered to proto-planetary disks and all the bodies they create without going through any changes.

The second theory is called chemical reset. In this process, the heat from the formation of the proto-planetary disk and newborn star breaks apart water molecules, which then reform once the proto-planetary disk cools.

Models of protium and deuterium.

Normal hydrogen, or protium, does not contain a neutron in its nucleus, while deuterium contains one neutron, making it heavier.
Dirk Hünniger/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

To test these theories, astronomers like me look at the ratio between normal water and a special kind of water called semi-heavy water. Water is normally made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Semi-heavy water is made of one oxygen atom, one hydrogen atom and one atom of deuterium – a heavier isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus.

The ratio of semi-heavy to normal water is a guiding light on the water trail – measuring the ratio can tell astronomers a lot about the source of water. Chemical models and experiments have shown that about 1,000 times more semi-heavy water will be produced in the cold interstellar medium than in the conditions of a protoplanetary disk.

This difference means that by measuring the ratio of semi-heavy to normal water in a place, astronomers can tell whether that water went through the chemical inheritance or chemical reset pathway.

A star surrounded by a ring of gas and dust.

V883 Orionis is a young star system with a rare star at its center that makes measuring water in the proto-planetary cloud, shown in the cutaway, possible.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), CC BY

Measuring water during the formation of a planet

Comets have a ratio of semi-heavy to normal water almost perfectly in line with chemical inheritance, meaning the water hasn’t undergone a major chemical change since it was first created in space. Earth’s ratio sits somewhere in between the inheritance and reset ratio, making it unclear where the water came from.

To truly determine where the water on planets comes from, astronomers needed to find a goldilocks proto-planetary disk – one that is just the right temperature and size to allow observations of water. Doing so has proved to be incredibly difficult. It is possible to detect semi-heavy and normal water when water is a gas; unfortunately for astronomers, the vast majority of proto-plantary disks are very cold and contain mostly ice, and it is nearly impossible to measure water ratios from ice at interstellar distances.

A breakthrough came in 2016, when my colleagues and I were studying proto-planetary disks around a rare type of young star called FU Orionis stars. Most young stars consume matter from the proto-planetary disks around them. FU Orionis stars are unique because they consume matter about 100 times faster than typical young stars and, as a result, emit hundreds of times more energy. Due to this higher energy output, the proto-planetary disks around FU Orionis stars are heated to much higher temperatures, turning ice into water vapor out to large distances from the star.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a powerful radio telescope in northern Chile, we discovered a large, warm proto-planetary disk around the Sunlike young star V883 Ori, about 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion.

V883 Ori emits 200 times more energy than the Sun, and my colleagues and I recognized that it was an ideal candidate to observe the semi-heavy to normal water ratio.

A radio image of the disk around V883 Ori.

The proto-planetary disk around V883 Ori contains gaseous water, shown in the orange layer, allowing astronomers to measure the ratio of semi-heavy to normal water.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Tobin, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), CC BY

Completing the water trail

In 2021, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array took measurements of V883 Ori for six hours. The data revealed a strong signature of semi-heavy and normal water coming from V883 Ori’s proto-planetary disk. We measured the ratio of semi-heavy to normal water and found that the ratio was very similar to ratios found in comets as well as the ratios found in younger protostar systems.

These results fill in the gap of the water trail forging a direct link between water in the interstellar medium, protostars, proto-planetary disks and planets like Earth through the process of inheritance, not chemical reset.

The new results show definitively that a substantial portion of the water on Earth most likely formed billions of years ago, before the Sun had even ignited. Confirming this missing piece of water’s path through the universe offers clues to origins of water on Earth. Scientists have previously suggested that most water on Earth came from comets impacting the planet. The fact that Earth has less semi-heavy water than comets and V883 Ori, but more than chemical reset theory would produce, means that water on Earth likely came from more than one source.The Conversation

John Tobin, Scientist, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Now this was a long article and I hope some of you stayed with John’s piece until the very end.

It really shows how the water trail is a much greater and longer journey than I assumed.

The relationship between us and wild animals.

In this particular case looking at the wolf.

So many times a particular article from a website that allows republishing is not only a good and relevant article but also is a quick way of me publishing a post when, as I was yesterday, a bit pressed for time.

So here is that article from The Conversation.

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Wolf restoration in Colorado shows how humans are rethinking their relationships with wild animals

A gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park. NPS/Jim Peaco

Christopher J. Preston, University of Montana

From sports to pop culture, there are few themes more appealing than a good comeback. They happen in nature, too. Even with the Earth losing species at a historic rate, some animals have defied the trend toward extinction and started refilling their old ecological niches.

I’m a philosopher based in Montana and specialize in environmental ethics. For my new book, “Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals,” I spent three years looking at wildlife comebacks across North America and Europe and considering the lessons they offer. In every case, whether the returnee is a bison, humpback whale, beaver, salmon, sea otter or wolf, the recovery has created an opportunity for humans to profoundly rethink how we live with these animals.

One place to see the rethink in action is Colorado, where voters approved a ballot measure in 2020 mandating the reintroduction of gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. Colorado’s Parks and Wildlife Agency has released a draft plan that calls for moving 30 to 50 gray wolves from other Rocky Mountain states into northwest Colorado over five years, starting in 2024.

Aldo Leopold, the famed conservationist and professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, believed that moral beliefs evolve over time to become more inclusive of the natural world. And what’s happening in Colorado suggests Leopold was right. Human attitudes toward wolves have clearly evolved since the mid-1940s, when bounties, mass poisoning and trapping eradicated wolves from the state.

Recovering animals encounter a world that is markedly different from the one in which they declined, especially in terms of how people think about wildlife. Here are several reasons I see why societal attitudes toward wolves have changed. The importance of keystone species

Wolves released in northwest Colorado will wear GPS collars that enable wildlife managers to track them.

The idea that certain influential species, which ecologists call keystone species, can significantly alter the ecosystems around them first appeared in scientific literature in 1974. Bison, sea otters, beavers, elephants and wolves all exert this power. One way in which wolves wield influence is by preying on coyotes, which produces ripple effects across the system. Fewer coyotes means more rodents, which in turn means better hunting success for birds of prey.

Wolves also cause nervous behaviors among their prey. Some scientists believe that newly returned predators create a “landscape of fear” among prey species – a term that isn’t positive or negative, just descriptive. This idea has shifted thinking about predators. For example, elk avoid some areas when wolves are around, resulting in ecological changes that cascade down from the top. Vegetation can recover, which in turn may benefit other species.

Insights into pack dynamics

Animal behavioral science research has provided pointers for better wolf management. Studies show that wolf packs are less likely to prey on livestock if their social structure remains intact. This means that ranchers and wildlife managers should take care not to remove the pack’s breeding pair when problems occur. Doing so can fragment the pack and send dispersing wolves into new territories.

Wildlife agencies also have access to years of data from close observation of wolf behavior in places like Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced starting in 1995. This research offers insights into the wolf’s intelligence and social complexity. All of this information helps to show how people can live successfully alongside them.

Predators provide economic value

Research has also demonstrated that wolves provide economic benefits to states and communities. Wisconsin researchers discovered that changes in deer behavior due to the presence of wolves have saved millions of dollars in avoided deer collisions with cars. These savings far exceed what it costs the state to manage wolves.

Wolf recovery has been shown to be a net economic benefit in areas of the U.S. West where they have returned. The dollars they attract from wolf-watchers, photographers and foreign visitors have provided a valuable new income stream in many communities.

Predators do kill livestock, but improved tracking has helped to put these losses in perspective. Montana Board of Livestock numbers show that wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions caused the loss of 131 cattle and 137 sheep in the state in 2022. This is from a total of 2,200,000 cattle and 190,000 sheep. Of the 131 cattle, 36 were confirmed to be taken by wolves – 0.0016% of the statewide herd.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, dogs, foxes and coyotes in Montana all killed more sheep and lambs than wolves did in 2020. Even eagles were three times more deadly to sheep and lambs than wolves were.

Actual costs to ranchers are certainly higher than these numbers suggest. The presence of wolves causes livestock to lose weight because the animals feed more nervously when wolves are around. Ranchers also lose sleep as they worry about wolves attacking their livestock and guard dogs. And clearly, low statewide kills are small comfort to a rancher who loses a dozen or more animals in one year. Margins are always tight in the livestock business.

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A northern Colorado rancher discusses options for protecting his cattle from wolves, which already are naturally present in the state.

What’s more, predators’ economic impacts don’t end with ranching. In Colorado, for example, elk numbers are likely to decline after wolves are reintroduced. This may affect state wildlife agency budgets that rely on license fees from elk hunters. It may also affect hunting outfitters’ incomes.

In my view, voters who supported bringing wolves back to Colorado should remain deeply aware of the full distribution of costs and support proactive compensation schemes for losses. They should be mindful that support for wolf reintroduction varies drastically between urban and rural communities and should insist that effective mechanisms are in place ahead of time to ensure fair sharing of the economic burdens that wolves generate.

A new ethical playing field

Despite these complexities, the idea of the “big bad wolf” clearly no longer dominates Americans’ thinking. And the wolf is not alone. Social acceptance of many other wildlife species is also increasing. For example, a 2023 study found that between 80% and 90% of Montanans believed grizzly bears – which are recovering and expanding their presence there – have a right to exist.

Aldo Leopold famously claimed to have experienced an epiphany when he shot a wolf in New Mexico in the 1920s and saw “a fierce green fire” dying in her eyes. In reality, his attitude took several more decades to change. Humans may have an ingrained evolutionary disposition to fear carnivorous predators like wolves, but the change ended up being real for Leopold, and it lasted.

Leopold, who died in 1948, did not live to see many wildlife species recover, but I believe he would have regarded what’s happening now as an opportunity for Americans’ moral growth. Because Leopold knew that ethics, like animals, are always evolving.

Christopher J. Preston, Professor of Philosophy, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Those last few paragraphs under the sub-heading of ‘A new ethical playing field’ show how many other wildlife species have gained a real advantage, a social acceptance as the article said. Long may it continue.

Please, please watch this

And I wish I knew what to say…

This is a video that is three years old.

But it is more pertinent today than it was when it was first released.

The video asks ‘… why we never really learnt how to talk about this’.

The video is a little less than ten minutes long so watch it now, with the family as well, if that is appropriate, and perhaps have a discussion afterwards.

Jean and I do not have any answers especially when the news is all about other things.

Yes, we know that the climate is changing but what exactly does that mean is a more difficult question to answer. Mind you there are a growing number of organisations committed to finding answers.

Yes, there are many scientists who have clear opinions on the situation but we need a global movement, NOW, to address this very urgent requirement, and there is no sign that the global community are even talking about climate change let alone doing something.

Please, please watch this:

I would love to hear your thoughts.

The clue to making us human

A really fascinating article from The Conversation on Imagination.

The website The Conversation had another very interesting link to something that sorts out the humans from all other life forms. It is imagination!

I have pleasure in republishing it!

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Imagination makes us human – this unique ability to envision what doesn’t exist has a long evolutionary history

Your brain can imagine things that haven’t happened or that don’t even exist. agsandrew/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Andrey Vyshedskiy, Boston University

Published February, 23rd, 2023

You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that’s not something that can actually happen. You can envision yourself doing something you’ve never done before – like water skiing – and maybe even imagine a better way to do it than anyone else.

Imagination involves creating a mental image of something that is not present for your senses to detect, or even something that isn’t out there in reality somewhere. Imagination is one of the key abilities that make us human. But where did it come from?

I’m a neuroscientist who studies how children acquire imagination. I’m especially interested in the neurological mechanisms of imagination. Once we identify what brain structures and connections are necessary to mentally construct new objects and scenes, scientists like me can look back over the course of evolution to see when these brain areas emerged – and potentially gave birth to the first kinds of imagination.

From bacteria to mammals

After life emerged on Earth around 3.4 billion years ago, organisms gradually became more complex. Around 700 million years ago, neurons organized into simple neural nets that then evolved into the brain and spinal cord around 525 million years ago.

Velociraptor chasing a furry critter
It was to mammals’ advantage to hide out while cold-blooded dinosaurs hunted during the day. Daniel Eskridge/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

Eventually dinosaurs evolved around 240 million years ago, with mammals emerging a few million years later. While they shared the landscape, dinosaurs were very good at catching and eating small, furry mammals. Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, though, and, like modern cold-blooded reptiles, could only move and hunt effectively during the daytime when it was warm. To avoid predation by dinosaurs, mammals stumbled upon a solution: hide underground during the daytime.

Not much food, though, grows underground. To eat, mammals had to travel above the ground – but the safest time to forage was at night, when dinosaurs were less of a threat. Evolving to be warm-blooded meant mammals could move at night. That solution came with a trade-off, though: Mammals had to eat a lot more food than dinosaurs per unit of weight in order to maintain their high metabolism and to support their constant inner body temperature around 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius).

Our mammalian ancestors had to find 10 times more food during their short waking time, and they had to find it in the dark of night. How did they accomplish this task?

To optimize their foraging, mammals developed a new system to efficiently memorize places where they’d found food: linking the part of the brain that records sensory aspects of the landscape – how a place looks or smells – to the part of the brain that controls navigation. They encoded features of the landscape in the neocortex, the outermost layer of the brain. They encoded navigation in the entorhinal cortex. And the whole system was interconnected by the brain structure called the hippocampus. Humans still use this memory system for remembering objects and past events, such as your car and where you parked it.

two bits of human brain are highlighted, one on each side
An interior brain structure called the hippocampus helps synthesize different kinds of information to create memories. Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Groups of neurons in the neocortex encode these memories of objects and past events. Remembering a thing or an episode reactivates the same neurons that initially encoded it. All mammals likely can recall and re-experience previously encoded objects and events by reactivating these groups of neurons. This neocortex-hippocampus-based memory system that evolved 200 million years ago became the first key step toward imagination.

The next building block is the capability to construct a “memory” that hasn’t really happened.

Involuntary made-up ‘memories’

The simplest form of imagining new objects and scenes happens in dreams. These vivid, bizarre involuntary fantasies are associated in people with the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep.

Scientists hypothesize that species whose rest includes periods of REM sleep also experience dreams. Marsupial and placental mammals do have REM sleep, but the egg-laying mammal the echidna does not, suggesting that this stage of the sleep cycle evolved after these evolutionary lines diverged 140 million years ago. In fact, recording from specialized neurons in the brain called place cells demonstrated that animals can “dream” of going places they’ve never visited before.

In humans, solutions found during dreaming can help solve problems. There are numerous examples of scientific and engineering solutions spontaneously visualized during sleep.

The neuroscientist Otto Loewi dreamed of an experiment that proved nerve impulses are transmitted chemically. He immediately went to his lab to perform the experiment – later receiving the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Elias Howe, the inventor of the first sewing machine, claimed that the main innovation, placing the thread hole near the tip of the needle, came to him in a dream.

Dmitri Mendeleev described seeing in a dream “a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.” And that was the periodic table.

These discoveries were enabled by the same mechanism of involuntary imagination first acquired by mammals 140 million years ago.

young professionals looking at glass wall with post-it notes
Intentionally brainstorming ideas depends on being able to control your imagination. Goodboy Picture Company/E+ via Getty Images

Imagining on purpose

The difference between voluntary imagination and involuntary imagination is analogous to the difference between voluntary muscle control and muscle spasm. Voluntary muscle control allows people to deliberately combine muscle movements. Spasm occurs spontaneously and cannot be controlled.

Similarly, voluntary imagination allows people to deliberately combine thoughts. When asked to mentally combine two identical right triangles along their long edges, or hypotenuses, you envision a square. When asked to mentally cut a round pizza by two perpendicular lines, you visualize four identical slices.

This deliberate, responsive and reliable capacity to combine and recombine mental objects is called prefrontal synthesis. It relies on the ability of the prefrontal cortex located at the very front of the brain to control the rest of the neocortex.

When did our species acquire the ability of prefrontal synthesis? Every artifact dated before 70,000 years ago could have been made by a creator who lacked this ability. On the other hand, starting about that time there are various archeological artifacts unambiguously indicating its presence: composite figurative objects, such as lion-man; bone needles with an eye; bows and arrows; musical instruments; constructed dwellings; adorned burials suggesting the beliefs in afterlife, and many more.

Multiple types of archaeological artifacts unambiguously associated with prefrontal synthesis appear simultaneously around 65,000 years ago in multiple geographical locations. This abrupt change in imagination has been characterized by historian Yuval Harari as the “cognitive revolution.” Notably, it approximately coincides with the largest Homo sapiens‘ migration out of Africa.

Genetic analyses suggest that a few individuals acquired this prefrontal synthesis ability and then spread their genes far and wide by eliminating other contemporaneous males with the use of an imagination-enabeled strategy and newly developed weapons.

So it’s been a journey of many millions of years of evolution for our species to become equipped with imagination. Most nonhuman mammals have potential for imagining what doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened involuntarily during REM sleep; only humans can voluntarily conjure new objects and events in our minds using prefrontal synthesis.

Andrey Vyshedskiy, Professor of Neuroscience, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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There we are! As the author of the article says: “Most nonhuman mammals have potential for imagining what doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened involuntarily during REM sleep; only humans can voluntarily conjure new objects and events in our minds using prefrontal synthesis.“

It has been a very long journey for us humans to be equipped with imagination. One wonders what the next ten or twenty years will bring? Any thoughts you want to leave as comments?

Good posture

Why it is so important!

We go to the local Club Northwest. Jean attends the Rock Steady class and I work for an hour with Bruce Pilgreen, one of the staff. Bruce is very knowledgeable of human bodies and, indeed, trained as a Coach some years ago.

About a month ago Bruce showed me how to lay on my back, with my legs pulled back and my head slightly raised on a small cushion. My hands were palm upwards and about forty degrees either side of my body. The point of this position was to feel my spine, particularly my lower spine, flat against the ground and practice deep breathing at the same time. It was all to do with posture and Bruce remarked how common bad posture was to be seen out in the streets.

Well I came across a MedlinePlus item on Posture and wanted to share it with you all.

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Guide to Good Posture

Summary

Good posture is about more than standing up straight so you can look your best. It is an important part of your long-term health. Making sure that you hold your body the right way, whether you are moving or still, can prevent pain, injuries, and other health problems.

What is posture?

Posture is how you hold your body. There are two types:

  • Dynamic posture is how you hold yourself when you are moving, like when you are walking, running, or bending over to pick up something.
  • Static posture is how you hold yourself when you are not moving, like when you are sitting, standing, or sleeping.

It is important to make sure that you have good dynamic and static posture.

The key to good posture is the position of your spine. Your spine has three natural curves – at your neck, mid back, and low back. Correct posture should maintain these curves, but not increase them. Your head should be above your shoulders, and the top of your shoulder should be over the hips.

How can posture affect my health?

Poor posture can be bad for your health. Slouching or slumping over can:

  • Misalign your musculoskeletal system
  • Wear away at your spine, making it more fragile and prone to injury
  • Cause neck, shoulder, and back pain
  • Decrease your flexibility
  • Affect how well your joints move
  • Affect your balance and increase your risk of falling
  • Make it harder to digest your food
  • Make it harder to breathe

How can I improve my posture in general?

  • Be mindful of your posture during everyday activities, like watching television, washing dishes, or walking
  • Stay active. Any kind of exercise may help improve your posture, but certain types of exercises can be especially helpful. They include yoga, tai chi, and other classes that focuses on body awareness. It is also a good idea to do exercises that strengthen your core (muscles around your back, abdomen, and pelvis).
  • Maintain a healthy weight. Extra weight can weaken your abdominal muscles, cause problems for your pelvis and spine, and contribute to low back pain. All of these can hurt your posture.
  • Wear comfortable, low-heeled shoes. High heels, for example, can throw off your balance and force you to walk differently. This puts more stress on your muscles and harms your posture.
  • Make sure work surfaces are at a comfortable height for you, whether you’re sitting in front of a computer, making dinner, or eating a meal.

How can I improve my posture when sitting?

Many Americans spend a lot of their time sitting – either at work, at school, or at home. It is important to sit properly, and to take frequent breaks:

  • Switch sitting positions often
  • Take brief walks around your office or home
  • Gently stretch your muscles every so often to help relieve muscle tension
  • Don’t cross your legs; keep your feet on the floor, with your ankles in front of your knees
  • Make sure that your feet touch the floor, or if that’s not possible, use a footrest
  • Relax your shoulders; they should not be rounded or pulled backwards
  • Keep your elbows in close to your body. They should be bent between 90 and 120 degrees.
  • Make sure that your back is fully supported. Use a back pillow or other back support if your chair does not have a backrest that can support your lower back’s curve.
  • Make sure that your thighs and hips are supported. You should have a well-padded seat, and your thighs and hips should be parallel to the floor.

How can I improve my posture when standing?

  • Stand up straight and tall
  • Keep your shoulders back
  • Pull your stomach in
  • Put your weight mostly on the balls of your feet
  • Keep your head level
  • Let your arms hang down naturally at your sides
  • Keep your feet about shoulder-width apart

With practice, you can improve your posture; you will look and feel better.

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There you are! I am sure that many, many people do not have good posture and the guidance above may just inspire you to aim for better posture.

Some less-known facts about dogs

A fascinating list!

Now I can’t recall where I saw these facts; I suspect they were emailed to me.

Whatever, it doesn’t matter, for they are amazing!

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1. Dogs have an incredible sense of smell—up to 100,000 times better than ours! They have more than 220 million olfactory receptors in their noses, while humans only have around 5 million.

2. Dogs can recognize up to 250 words and gestures, and they can even understand the tone of voice we use when we’re speaking to them.

3. Dogs can see in the dark better than us. They have a layer of cells in their eyes called the tapetum lucidum which reflects light back into the retina and helps them to see better in low light.

4. Dogs can sense when something is wrong or when you’re feeling down. They’ll often come and sit with you or give you extra cuddles when you’re feeling blue.

5. Dogs have an incredible sense of direction and can find their way back home from miles away. They use a combination of smell, sight and sound to remember the route they took.

6. Dogs can often tell when you’re about to sneeze. They have a special ability to sense subtle changes in our body language, and they can detect the slight changes that happen right before you sneeze.

7. Dogs can also tell when you’re happy or sad. They have the ability to sense changes in our breathing, body temperature, and even the amount of sweat we produce.

8. Dogs can sense when you’re getting sick. They can detect changes in your scent that you don’t even notice, and they’ll often come and comfort you when you’re feeling unwell.

9. Dogs can sense when someone is going to epileptic seizures or diabetic shock. They can detect the changes in smell, behavior and body chemistry that occur before a seizure or shock happens.

10. Dogs can detect certain types of cancer. They’re able to sniff out volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath, urine or sweat of a person with cancer, which is why some organizations are training dogs to use their noses to detect cancer in humans.

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Dogs are amazing animals, in so many ways!

Plastics in the ocean

A fascinating insight into recovered plastic.

Like so many others we do our little bit regarding plastic but do not properly think about the issue. I have to admit that I am not even sure if all plastics are harmful or just some.

But I comprehend art!

That is why I am republishing, with permission, this article from The Conversation.

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My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean

Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008. David Rothstein, CC BY-ND

Pam Longobardi, Georgia State University

I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning.

My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii. At the edge of a black lava beach pounded by surf, I encountered multitudes upon multitudes of plastic objects that the angry ocean was vomiting onto the rocky shore.

I could see that somehow, impossibly, humans had permeated the ocean with plastic waste. Its alien presence was so enormous that it had reached this most isolated point of land in the immense Pacific Ocean. I felt I was witness to an unspeakable crime against nature, and needed to document it and bring back evidence.

I began cleaning the beach, hauling away weathered and misshapen plastic debris – known and unknown objects, hidden parts of a world of things I had never seen before, and enormous whalelike colored entanglements of nets and ropes.

Three large plastic art installations, the central one a cornucopia spilling plastic objects onto the floor.
‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I returned to that site again and again, gathering material evidence to study its volume and how it had been deposited, trying to understand the immensity it represented. In 2006, I formed the Drifters Project, a collaborative global entity to highlight these vagrant, translocational plastics and recruit others to investigate and mitigate ocean plastics’ impact.

My new book, “Ocean Gleaning,” tracks 17 years of my art and research around the world through the Drifters Project. It reveals specimens of striking artifacts harvested from the sea – objects that once were utilitarian, but have been changed by their oceanic voyages and come back as messages from the ocean.

Array of plastic objects, including toys, action figures and fragments of larger objects.
‘Drifters Objects,’ a tiny sample of the plastic artifacts Pam Longobardi has collected from beaches worldwide. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

Living in a plastic age

I grew up in what some now deem the age of plastic. Though it’s not the only modern material invention, plastic has had the most unforeseen consequences.

My father was a biochemist at the chemical company Union Carbide when I was a child in New Jersey. He played golf with an actor who portrayed “The Man from Glad,” a Get Smart-styled agent who rescued flustered housewives in TV commercials from inferior brands of plastic wrap that snarled and tangled. My father brought home souvenir pins of Union Carbide’s hexagonal logo, based on the carbon molecule, and figurine pencil holders of “TERGIE,” the company’s blobby turquoise mascot.

On the 2013 Gyre Expedition, Pam Longobardi traveled with a team of scientists, artists and policymakers to investigate and remove tons of oceanic plastic washing out of great gyres, or currents, in the Pacific Ocean, and make art from it.

Today I see plastic as a zombie material that haunts the ocean. It is made from petroleum, the decayed and transformed life forms of the past. Drifting at sea, it “lives” again as it gathers a biological slime of algae and protozoans, which become attachment sites for larger organisms.

When seabirds, fish and sea turtles mistake this living encrustation for food and eat it, plastic and all, the chemical load lives on in their digestive tracts. Their body tissues absorb chemicals from the plastic, which remain undigested in their stomachs, often ultimately killing them.

Two piles of tiny particles of virtually identical sizes.
Plastic ‘nurdles,’ (left), tiny pellets that serve as raw materials for manufacturing plastic products, and herring roe, or eggs (right). These visually analogous forms exemplify how fish can mistake plastic for food. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

The forensics of plastic

I see plastic objects as the cultural archaeology of our time – relics of global late-capitalist consumer society that mirror our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. They become transformed as they leave the quotidian world and collide with nature. By regurgitating them ashore or jamming them into sea caves, the ocean is communicating with us through materials of our own making. Some seem eerily familiar; others are totally alien.

Two views of a degraded arm from a plastic doll, found on Playa Jaco in Costa Rica.
A degraded plastic doll arm, from the series ‘Evidence of Crimes.’ Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

A person engaging in ocean gleaning acts as a detective and a beacon, hunting for the forensics of this crime against the natural world and shining the light of interrogation on it. By searching for ocean plastic in a state of open receptiveness, a gleaner like me can find symbols of pop culture, religion, war, humor, irony and sorrow.

A rolling landscape covered with thousands of life vests.
‘Division Line,’ 2016. This photograph shows the ‘life-jacket cemetary’ in Lesvos, Greece. Traumatized asylum-seekers and migrants arriving by boat from Türkiye leave the life vests on shore as they stagger inland. Most of the waste is plastic. © Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

In keeping with the drifting journeys of these material artifacts, I prefer using them in a transitive form as installations. All of these works can be dismantled and reconfigured, although plastic materials are nearly impossible to recycle. I display some objects as specimens on steel pins, and wire others together to form large-scale sculptures.

A plastic bottle cap inscribed 'Endless' and a photograph of a beach littered with plastic objects.
From the series ‘Prophetic Objects,’ a plastic cap from a Greek manufacturer of cleaning products, found on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I am interested in ocean plastic in particular because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change. Because ocean plastic visibly shows nature’s attempts to reabsorb and regurgitate it, it has profound stories to tell.

A large sculpted anchor in the center of an art gallery, with ties to life preservers mounted on the ceiling.
‘Albatross’ and ‘Hope Floats,’ 2017. Recovered ocean plastic, survival rescue blankets, life vest straps and steel. Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND

I believe humankind is at a crossroads with regards to the future. The ocean is asking us to pay attention. Paying attention is an act of giving, and in the case of plastic pollution, it is also an act of taking: Taking plastic out of your daily life. Taking plastic out of the environment. And taking, and spreading, the message that the ocean is laying out before our eyes.

Pam Longobardi, Regents’ Professor of Art and Design, Georgia State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Pam at one point describes the ocean plastic”… because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change …”. It raises questions that I can only ponder the answer. Ultimately, are there too many inhabitants on this planet? What does the next generation think? Is there an answer?