James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

In the forests of British Columbia, where recent wildfires have sent smoke across borders and dimmed blue summer skies, a series of studies from the past 30 years contends that large, old trees send resources and messages to the seedlings around them. The “mothering” could, hypothetically, help burned landscapes recover faster, boost the amount of carbon dioxide stores in soil, and improve the resiliency of natural systems overall.

The idea seems to borrow from bedtime tales about ancient trees and the enchanted forests they foster; to validate beliefs about all types of creatures nourish their young; to vouch for the inherent goodness of nature, where collaboration triumphs over competition.

But two papers have recently called into question the evidence supporting the “mother tree” explanation. Do these veterans of the forest act as guardians for newer generations, protecting them from drought, disease, and deforestation? Or is their relationship much more complicated?

What is a ‘mother tree’?

The term “mother tree” was coined in the 2000s by a Canadian scientist named Suzanne Simard, who grew up in a family of loggers in the Monashee Mountains in British Columbia. The old-growth forests on the range sustained a booming timber industry for more than a century.

.

A couple tries to wrap their arms around a massive 800-year-old Douglas fir in British Columbia, Canada. Matthew Bailey/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

In addition to its magnitude, which will be dangerous for some, the heat will be notable for its longevity. Phoenix, for example, on Monday logged its 11th day in a row at or above 110 degrees, and the forecast calls for highs in the 111-to-117-degree range until further notice. That could catapult the heat-prone city into its longest-ever streak above that level.

The heat will be dry yet punishing in the Southeast, while the south-central U.S. and southern Plains will contend with humidity drawn in from the Gulf of Mexico. That will overlap with the hot temperatures to push heat indexes — measures of how hot it feels, taking into account temperature and humidity — into hazardous territory.

What’s happening right now?

.

Jessie Fuentes walks along the Rio Grande under a warm sun on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Heat records are expected into the week ahead. (Eric Gay/AP)

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

From left, Joseph Neubauer, Justice Clarence Thomas, Paul Anthony Novelly, and David Sokol at the Horatio Alger awards in 2010, where the justice was honored.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

President Biden said that Ukraine would have to meet other qualifications, “including democratization.” Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

A rendering by a private developer called ASTM of what a new stone facade of Penn Station would look like from 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue, with the drum of Madison Square Garden also clad in light stone. Credit…via ASTM, PAU, and HOK

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Gothamist reported that “residents of the Bug Apple want these unwelcome tourists to skip town.”

WABC amplified the city’s pain: “No, you are not ‘bugging-out.’ A swarm of insects has seemingly taken over the city.”

But for every offhand, on-the-street reference to a Biblical-style plague, be it a swarm of locusts or gnats or hail and thunder, there is a scientist. Dr. Corrie Moreau, a Cornell University professor in entomology, who looked at images of the insects, which can be green or white, said she believed they were aphids. Insect swarms often emerge to coordinate reproduction, which she believed could be attributed to the current appearance in New York City.

.

A close-up of a green aphid on a leaf. Credit…nechaevkon/Shutterstock

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

For as long as humans have roamed the Earth, we have sought to find our place in the cosmos. From the city-states of ancient Greece to the soaring capstones of the Egyptian pyramids, across the deserts and towering mountains of ancient China down to the rolling plains of Mesoamerica, humans have sought to understand how the universe works. They developed mathematics to trace the motions of the planets, estimated the circumference of the Earth by walking from city to city, created star tables and timekeeping codices, and even recorded celestial events like Halley’s Comet, supernovae, and eclipses. 

With time, we have refined our models of the Universe. Using ellipses, Johannes Kepler reconfigured celestial motions. Galileo revolutionized Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the Solar System by discovering that the Sun, not the Earth, is the body around which all other elements of the Solar System orbit. Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity, which was later supplanted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Discovery by discovery, we paint in the gaps of the picture of our Universe; and yet somehow, with each brushstroke, that image morphs, evolving into something ever-changing, new, and unrecognizable. The Universe that Kepler and Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, Newton, and Galileo, and even Einstein understood is different from the one we know today.

Today’s understanding of the Universe is unsettling. It is not one that fits in a tidy little box with neat lines and a perfect lid. Our Universe is mystifying, complex. It defies expectations. 

For starters, our Universe is not a static, enclosed entity. Our Universe is expanding. From everywhere all at once, the fabric of spacetime is stretching away from everywhere else like an inflating balloon, carrying galaxies along with it. Photons traveling the lanes of the cosmos are stretched along with spacetime, their wavelengths growing ever longer, or redder, thus red-shifting with the expansion of space. 

Our Universe isn’t expanding into anything. To our knowledge, there is no extra dimension around the Universe; rather, space itself is expanding, causing the space between galaxy clusters — the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe — to get bigger and bigger with time.

.

Credit: ESA/Hubble

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________