tingilinde

mowing patterns and bees

How you mow matters.

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Traditionally, grasslands were grazed by livestock and provided hay. Plants thrived in the sunlight, and wildlife took advantage of microhabitats created by half-nibbled grasses. In places where livestock has been removed, mowing can re-create some of those niches as well as help prevent shrubs and trees from changing the habitat.

Industrial agriculture has made meadows less welcoming to insects. Excess nitrogen from fertilizer and air pollution has reduced the diversity of meadow plants. And changes in mowing—entire fields are cut all at once—has also degraded habitat quality. More species of insects can thrive when there are patches of mown grass, which contain more herbaceous plants to feed on and niches for mating and nesting.

Since the 1990s, some farmers and land managers have begun to cut grasslands in phases, mowing just part of a field at a time. This approach of “phased mowing” helps some insects, but leaves much to be desired, says Laurian Parmentier, an entomologist at Ghent University. For example, grassland habitats would be more suitable for certain species if some parts are not cut every year. Also, the large rectangular shape of mowing patterns is awkward. That’s because if a large block is mown all at once, insects living there may be far away from the taller, uncut grass on the other side of the field.

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mowing patterns and bees

How you mow matters.

snip

...

Traditionally, grasslands were grazed by livestock and provided hay. Plants thrived in the sunlight, and wildlife took advantage of microhabitats created by half-nibbled grasses. In places where livestock has been removed, mowing can re-create some of those niches as well as help prevent shrubs and trees from changing the habitat.

Industrial agriculture has made meadows less welcoming to insects. Excess nitrogen from fertilizer and air pollution has reduced the diversity of meadow plants. And changes in mowing—entire fields are cut all at once—has also degraded habitat quality. More species of insects can thrive when there are patches of mown grass, which contain more herbaceous plants to feed on and niches for mating and nesting.

Since the 1990s, some farmers and land managers have begun to cut grasslands in phases, mowing just part of a field at a time. This approach of “phased mowing” helps some insects, but leaves much to be desired, says Laurian Parmentier, an entomologist at Ghent University. For example, grassland habitats would be more suitable for certain species if some parts are not cut every year. Also, the large rectangular shape of mowing patterns is awkward. That’s because if a large block is mown all at once, insects living there may be far away from the taller, uncut grass on the other side of the field.

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given men a bit of responsibility

Of course it has a snowball's change in hell, but the idea turns out to have a biblical root - so maybe the fundamentalists should root for it:-)  But it does make people talk...

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According to WLBT News, the bill put forward by the Democrat lawmaker, if passed into law, seeks to make it “unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilise an embryo.”

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after the fires

Susan Crawford on rebuilding, Trump and insurance.  Will prevention become important for the next one?

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This week, President Trump told Sean Hannity that "Los Angeles has changed everything," that he would "rather see the states take care of their own problems," and that "FEMA is getting in the way." Major reform of FEMA is undoubtedly ahead, with the Project 25 report signaling that the Trump administration will "shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government."

Because of the LA fires, the Golden State will now be forced into a sudden moment of institutional and market change, akin to what happened in Florida more than thirty years ago following the disastrous arrival of Hurricane Andrew. This time the disruption will likely be more extreme, because the uncertainty of federal support will amplify the effects of these shifts on both residents and local government budgets.

It's a good thing California already leads the way as a state taking on greater responsibility for climate adaptation, because they're going to need all the creative capacity they can harness to get through this—and then they'll have to keep adjusting forever. They should start now by focusing on lowering physical risks to Californians by limiting building in risky areas and requiring adherence to stiff building code requirements.

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jennifer aniston cells

A piece on recent work understanding concept cells.

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Imagine you’re on a first date, sipping a martini at a bar. You eat an olive and patiently listen to your date tell you about his job at a bank. Your brain is processing this scene, in part, by breaking it down into concepts. Bar. Date. Martini. Olive. Bank. Deep in your brain, neurons known as concept cells are firing.

You might have concept cells that fire for martinis but not for olives. Or ones that fire for bars — perhaps even that specific bar, if you’ve been there before. The idea of a “bank” also has its own set of concept cells, maybe millions of them. And there, in that dimly lit bar, you’re starting to form concept cells for your date, whether you like him or not. Those cells will fire when something reminds you of him.

Concept neurons fire for their concept no matter how it is presented: in real life or a photo, in text or speech, on television or in a podcast. “It’s more abstract, really different from what you’re seeing,” said Elizabeth Buffalo (opens a new tab), a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.

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ai phrenology

You'd think they would have moved away from such dangerous foolishness...

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Every few months, another highly educated academic asks: What if I tried doing debunked 18th-century race science, but with AI?

The latest entry into the AI phrenology portfolio comes from a group of economics professors who say they’ve developed a method for algorithmically analyzing a single photo of a person’s face in order to calculate their personality and predict their educational and career outcomes.

Other recent academic forays into AI phrenology—like algorithms that purport to predict a person’s sexuality or the likelihood they will commit a crime based on their facial features—have been widely criticized and debunked. Investigations have also shown that commercial AI tools that claim to measure personality traits are extremely unreliable.

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damaging national security and infrastructure

Because - why not? Break everything seems to be their special place.

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For all the hype and warnings about how TikTok is clearly a “national security threat” from China, the Trump administration has effectively kneecapped the investigation into one of the most serious cybersecurity breaches in US history — a genuine, proven threat to national security. In what Team Trump probably thinks is a move to “destroy the deep state,” they’ve actually disbanded the government review board tasked with getting to the bottom of this unprecedented hack of our phone system by China.

We’re still nowhere near understanding just how bad the Chinese hack of our phone system was. The incident that was only discovered last fall involved the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon, which used the US’s CALEA phone wiretapping system as a backdoor to gain incredible, unprecedented access to much of the US’s phone system “for months or longer.”

As details come out, the extent of the hackers’ access has become increasingly alarming. It is reasonable to call it the worst hack in US history.
Soon after it was discovered, Homeland Security tasked the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) to lead an investigation into the hack to uncover what allowed it to happen and assess how bad it really was. The CSRB was established by Joe Biden to improve the government’s cybersecurity in the face of global cybersecurity attacks on our infrastructure and was made up of a mix of government and private sector cybersecurity experts.

And one of the first things Donald Trump did upon retaking the presidency was to dismantle the board, along with all other DHS Advisory Committees.

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teen vogue

They do the reporting major news media have given up on.

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When ICE did make arrests, the majority of people detained whose families we supported were the family’s primary wage earner; the detention created an economic crisis as much as an attack on the family’s psychological and emotional stability. Additionally, there was often little public assistance, beyond food banks, for which the remaining family members qualified. So we started an emergency cash-assistance fund to provide small grants, usually between $300 and $2,000, to help the family stave off eviction and afford the first payment to an immigration attorney. The fund also became a way for local immigrants who were not targeted by ICE to provide support.

Dozens of women stepped up to make and sell tamales and pupusas after church mass or in school parking lots at community fundraisers, and the funds were often sent to someone whose family had experienced detention that same week. Over and over, we heard the phrase “Hoy por ellos, mañana por nosotros,” meaning "Today for them, tomorrow for us.” Local elected officials often pledged contributions as well. But the financial need may be much greater this time. We have listed some tips for anyone who wants to start a hotline, neighborhood watch, or cash-assistance program in our organizing playbook.

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a failure for an arctic vessel

A ship designed for a different task, huge political donations and a bad ship when something is really needed.

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The icebreaker Aiviq is a gas guzzler with a troubled history. The ship was built to operate in the Arctic, but it has a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice. Its waste and discharge systems weren’t designed to meet polar code, its helicopter pad is in the wrong place to launch rescue operations and its rear deck is easily swamped by big waves.

On its maiden voyage to Alaska in 2012, the 360-foot vessel lost control of the Shell Oil drill rig it was towing, and Coast Guard helicopter crews braved a storm to pluck 18 men off the wildly lurching deck of the rig before it crashed into a rocky beach. An eventual Coast Guard investigation faulted bad decision-making by people in charge but also flagged problems with the Aiviq’s design.

But for all this, the same Coast Guard bought the Aiviq for $125 million late last year.

The United States urgently needs new icebreakers in an era when climate change is bringing increased traffic to the Arctic, including military patrols near U.S. waters by Russia and China. That the first of the revamped U.S. fleet is a secondhand vessel a top Coast Guard admiral once said “may, at best, marginally meet our requirements” is a sign of how long the country has tried and failed to build new ones.

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not only do they abuse history

They make a mockery of the label.  For them it's always America was founded on "Christian principles!"  That is until it comes to 

welcoming the immigrant

helping the poor

feeding the hungry

bringing healthcare to the sick

forgiving debt

stewardship for the planet

laying down swords

loving our neighbors like ourselves