Monthly Archives: April 2022

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Memories & History

Frederick Law Olmsted: A Well Designed Bicentennial | Library of Congress Blog

April 28, 2022, by Neely Tucker

Frederick Law Olmsted. Engraved by T. Johnson; from a photo by James Notman. 1983. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

This month, the Library is recognizing this week’s bicentennial of the birth of writer, administrator and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of the U.S. Capitol grounds and public parks and spaces around the country.

Activities include an Olmsted Bicentennial exhibit in the Jefferson Building and a series of By the People crowdsourcing transcription challenges for online volunteers.

The Library holds the largest collection of manuscript materials in the nation related to Olmsted’s long career, as well as the records of the 20th-century successor firm operated by his sons. The Manuscript Division holds both Olmsted’s personal papers and the records of Olmsted Associates. The landscape architecture firm based in Brookline, Massachusetts, was operated by Olmsted sons Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and John Charles Olmsted, and featured many talented associates.

These collections are digitized and available online. The bicentennial exhibit charts Olmsted’s life from his youth through modern reinterpretations of the public parks he designed. The five-case display is on view on both sides of the Great Hall through June 4. It features items from the Manuscript Division, the Prints and Photographs Division and the general collections in combination with reproductions of drawings and photographs from the National Park Service’s Olmsted Archives at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline.

Source: Frederick Law Olmsted: A Well Designed Bicentennial | Library of Congress Blog

Science & Health

Why We Forget Things, According to Neuroscience | Time

By Corinne Purtill, April 28, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

Studies on the brains of zebrafish, like the one shown here, are helping scientists better understand memory, and the power of forgetting.
Illustration by TIME (Source image: Zhuowei Du)

A baby zebrafish is just half the size of a pea. A recent look inside its transparent brain, however, offers clues to the far bigger mystery of how we remember—and how we forget.

In an experiment that yielded insights into memory and the brain, a team of researchers at the University of Southern California taught the tiny creature to associate a bright light with a flash of heat, a temperature change the fish responded to by trying to swim away.

Using a custom-designed microscope, the team then captured images of the animals’ brains in the moments before and after they learned to associate the light and the heat. It’s the first known look at how a living vertebrate’s brain restructures itself as the animal forms a memory.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Why We Forget Things, According to Neuroscience | Time

Current Affairs, Love & Relationships, Science & Health

Your dog’s breed doesn’t determine its personality, study suggests | Science | AAAS

Work challenges popular idea that breeds have specific, reliable behaviors

28 Apr 20222:00 PM, By David Grimm

Tod the papillon, posing for a photo at the end of his lifeKen Morrill/Yenra Photography

When Kathleen Morrill was 12, she decided she needed a puppy. Not just any puppy—a pint-size papillon with a black button nose and bushy, perky ears. When her parents resisted, “I turned on the waterworks,” laughs Morrill, now a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester.

And so, the family ended up with its first dog—a 2-month-old pup she named Tod.

Tod was registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC), whose website describes his breed as “curious” and “friendly” with a “hardy constitution.” But the puppy was shy and scared of strangers, and he developed separation anxiety as he aged.

When Morrill’s family got another papillon, Rosie, a year later, she was entirely different: bold, outgoing, and adoring of all people. “Breed can be important,” Morrill says, “but it’s not the full picture of a dog’s behavior.”

From article…

Now, she has the science to back that up.

In a new study, Morrill and her colleagues show that almost none of the behaviors we associate with dog breeds—from lovable Labradors to pugnacious pit bulls—are hard-wired.

Aside from a few ancient traits, environment seems to play a much larger role than pedigree.

Source: Your dog’s breed doesn’t determine its personality, study suggests | Science | AAAS

Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Food & Drink, Music, Podcasts, Travel

Travel Log: ‘Star Trek: The Cruise’ Is Voyage Worth Taking – TrekMovie.com

By Aaron Bossig, April 24, 2022

(Photo: Star Trek: The Cruise)

Last month the fifth official Star Trek Cruise returned to port, after a seven-day voyage.

Onboard to document the experience was a TrekMovie contributor and host of the Hungry Trilobyte podcast, Aaron Bossig who is a cruising regular.

More than a floating Trek convention

Star Trek: The Cruise V left out of Port Canaveral, FL on February 26, 2022.  The event was set on Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas vessel, a Voyager-class cruise ship in service since 2003.  The itinerary held three ports of call: Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten.

Unlike other times when the Mariner left Florida, this day all of its 1,600 cabins were filled with Star Trek fans. The staff was wearing Starfleet uniforms.  The wall art had been changed to portray Starfleet captains.  The elevators had been redressed to resemble turbolifts. Sailing toward the horizon, the ship’s sound system played Star Trek themes by Jay Chattaway and Jerry Goldsmith.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Travel Log: ‘Star Trek: The Cruise’ Is Voyage Worth Taking – TrekMovie.com

Current Affairs, Science & Health

Scientists Discover How to Peer Into the ‘Mind’s Eye’ – CNET

If you find it hard to mentally visualize objects, you’re not alone. You might have aphantasia.

By Monisha Ravisetti, April 26, 2022 12:12 p.m. PT

Where do you lie on the aphantasiac spectrum?
Getty Images

Picture a red apple. Great. Now, which of the following describes you?

Group 1: You’re visualizing a vibrant, ruby-colored fruit like it’s living in your mind.

Group 2: You’re pondering the concept of an apple without getting any mental imagery. If you’re in the former group, you might wonder whether group 2 just didn’t understand the prompt. If you’re in the latter, you might find it extremely odd for group 1 to exist at all. And group 2, you might have aphantasia.

For those of you still scratching your head about which category you fall under, the good news is that an experimental startup in Australia is on a quest to find an objective measure of how vivid your imagination is. Having made some serious headway recently, it published a paper about its progress in the journal eLife last month — but we’ll get back to that.

Source: Scientists Discover How to Peer Into the ‘Mind’s Eye’ – CNET

Books & Reading, Libraries

Weirdest things Denver librarians find hidden between book pages | The Denver Post

A librarian is sharing the staff’s finds — from lunch meat to marijuana leaves — in blog posts with pictures

By Elizabeth Hernandez | ehernandez@denverpost.com | The Denver Post, PUBLISHED: April 25, 2022 at 9:05 a.m. | UPDATED: April 26, 2022 at 4:00 p.m.

Andy Cross, The Denver Post. Library assistant Tiffany Ruhl peels off stickers that designate books as new at the Denver Public Library’s Ross-University Hills Branch on July 1, 2020.

When Walt Disney said, “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island,” he likely wasn’t envisioning bologna slices stuffed between pages.

But Denver librarians count the meat product among the trove of items found inside returned library books and collected by staff.

Madison Hosack, a librarian at Denver Public Library’s Central Library, is tasked with evaluating collections, meaning Hosack and her colleagues go through the stacks to check books’ conditions.

During that process, she and her coworkers began collecting the items — odd, funny, sweet or perishable — that they come across while flipping through the pages.

“It’s such a range of stuff that you’ll find,” Hosack said. “Bookmarks from all over the world, to-do lists, little doodles or drawings.”

An illustrated story entitled “The Lousy Ketchup Bottle.” Marijuana leaves. An origami bird. A Pokémon card. A Cinemark ticket stub to “Little Women.” A bookmark from Stardust Book Emporium in Savannah, Georgia. The aforementioned lunch meat.

Source: Weirdest things Denver librarians find hidden between book pages