Photo: SMALLCREATIVE/Depositphotos

Energy is necessary for moving forward, for both society and individual communities. These days, a shift to clean energy and renewable resources is critical to averting the oncoming climate catastrophe. President Biden has poured money and time into promoting clean energy and related jobs, while startups have leapt at the opportunity to craft a profitable and green way forward. But resistance is strong, especially in areas where coal plays an important economic role, and climate deniers persist in politics and media. As an example of a green, prosperous future, energy company Swift Current Energy (SCE) is building Pennsylvania's largest solar farm—Mineral Basin Solar Project—on land near where a massive coal plant once lived.

The Homer City Generating Station closed in 2023, after over 50 years of operation. The coal plant, which produced a massive 1,888 MW of energy, supplied homes and businesses across New York and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, burning coal is a significant factor in the build up of carbon dioxide that is rapidly and dangerously warming our climate. Known as  “the dirtiest fossil fuel,” coal once powered the Industrial Revolution and supported many families in mining regions along the east coast. The loss of jobs has been a significant factor in local resistance to clean energy solutions. However, the overall benefits of clean energy are hard to deny.

SCE is planning to break ground on a massive solar farm, the largest in Pennsylvania. It will produce 402 MW once complete, and power 75,000 homes with much-needed energy. The company is also considering storing excess energy offsite. Funding for the project comes from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) purse under the Biden administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The DOE is specifically interested in replacing former mine land with clean energy such as solar and wind. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm noted, “Thanks to the President’s Investing in America agenda, DOE is helping deploy clean energy solutions on current and former mine land across the country—supporting jobs and economic development in the areas hit hardest by our evolving energy landscape.”

The new solar farm in Pennsylvania will bring over 750 jobs in construction over the next few years. Once operational, it will generate over $1 million in annual tax revenue for the local governments and school system. It will hopefully be completed by late 2026, and it already has a 20-year purchase agreement with New York State. SCE plans to add other solar farms in Appalachia in the near future, helping replace the energy and jobs once supplied by coal mining and burning. Much as coal was once important to local economies, renewable energy is also a growing field.

Where Pennsylvania's largest coal plant once stood, thousands of solar panels will create the state's largest solar farm.

Photo: VER0NICKA/Depositphotos

h/t: [electrek]

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The Redwoods forests are a magnificent part of Yurok heritage and present day life. (Photo: Michael Schweppe via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

Towering Redwood trees cover much of what is now northern California. Old growth groves can boast trees over 20 feet wide that have stood on that spot over 2,000 years. These ancient plants have always been critical to the culture and provision of Indigenous people local to the region, among them the prominent Yurok Tribe. While this connection to the Redwoods remains strong today, most Yurok and neighboring Indigenous lands were stolen away in greed for gold and lumber over the years. Now, a historic memorandum signed on March 19, 2024, agrees to transfer an important 125-acre parcel known as ‘O Rew back to the Yurok Tribe, who will co-manage a “gateway” to the state and National Parks with these respective park services.

The agreement is signed by the Tribe, the Save the Redwoods League, the National Park Service, and California State Parks. The Save the Redwoods League is a non-profit who currently owns the land, which they purchased in 2013 with the purpose of restoring it. It had previously been paved and its natural stream obstructed by a lumber company. In a statement, Joseph L. James, the chairman of the Yurok Tribe, announced, “On behalf of the Yurok people, I want to sincerely thank Save the Redwoods League for committing to repatriate this critical part of our homeland. We are also appreciative of Redwood National and State Parks’ participation in this truly one-of-a-kind partnership. Together, we are creating a new conservation model that recognizes the value of Tribal land management.”

The Tribe will soon be the official owners of the land which will serve as a “gateway” to the magnificent redwood parks. ‘O Rew will connect to trails within the parks, allowing access. The Tribe is working to restore native plant life be reseeding thousands of plants. They are continuing their partnership with Save the Redwoods to restore Prairie Creek, which runs through ‘O Rew and was once a salmon habitat. A new channel has been cut with ponds. Frogs, salamanders, and salmon have already begun to return in impressive numbers.

In addition to the restoration of the natural landscape, the Tribe and the other signatories have planned educational and cultural sites. A visitor center will welcome, while a cultural center will display artifacts repatriated to the Tribe. Traditional plank houses and a sweat lodge will also give insight into how Yurok past and present have been influenced by the Redwoods. Armando Quintero, director of California State Parks, said, “This historic agreement provides a pathway for the addition of Indigenous lands to the suite of values employed in co-managing and protecting Redwood National and State Parks lands for the enjoyment of public and Indigenous peoples in the region.”

There is a growing Land Back movement to return stolen lands to Indigenous tribes, particularly the National Parks. The transfer of ‘O Rew hopefully foresees transfers to come, and it will help steward the Redwoods into the future.

A portion of land which serves as a gateway to the Redwood National and State Parks will be returned to the Indigenous ownership of the Yurok Tribe, who will co-manage with the park services.

A reconstructed, traditional Yurok plank house using Redwood boards. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

h/t: [The Guardian]

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A 13th-century diagram of veins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Think of medieval doctors and you probably picture a man dressed in robes, perhaps with a plague mask. In the popular imagination, medicine of the Middle Ages is all leeches, bloodletting, and mystical charms and potions. But to a medieval mind, our modern surgery, pharmaceuticals, and blood tests might look just as divorced from scientific reality.

Modern scholars of the history of medicine are attempting to put the record straight by situating these historic practitioners in a long history of scientific inquiry and deduction. Historian Meg Leja of SUNY Binghamton, who recently penned an article for The Conversation, and Peregrine Horden, whose research was recently published in Social History of Medicine, are trying to shift the needle.

As commented on by Leja, Horden's article situates bizarre medieval “cures” in contexts that explain the rationale behind the (usually gross) regime. These nasty cures could use the fluids and organs of animals, while others involved mixing herbal ingredients like garlic and mugwort. Historic practitioners were undoubtedly successful in curing ailments—treating infections with antibacterial poultices made with honey or concerns for fresh air allude to modern cures. Unfortunately, without modern developments in childbirth, pharmacology, or surgery, saving patients was certainly harder. The regular reoccurrence of deadly pandemics such as plague also devastated patients.

These medieval doctors received inherited medical knowledge from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. Yet in the early Middle Ages, often called the Dark Ages, books were rare, and universities just began to form after the year 1000 CE. Monks carefully guarded and copied the remains of ancient knowledge left in Europe.

As physicians began to train at universities, they learned to combine this knowledge with practice and rigorous observation. A patient's fluids and appearance could tell them a lot, just like they inform modern medicine. They then rationally tried to adjust what they observed back to a normal state, perhaps by letting blood to purge toxins or altering a diet to affect the humors of the body.

Early texts from the Dark Ages and into the later medieval period recorded recipes for treatments, signs of disease in urine, and views of veins gained from autopsies. As medieval doctors were far from the only practitioners of healing, their patients would have had a wide variety of treatments to choose from. While today's patients may prefer a modern X-ray with good reason, there's less reason to look down our noses at the medieval “quacks.”

One may think of the Dark Ages as a time of quack doctors and magical cures, but medieval medicine was not as divorced from science as we might think.

A 14th-century chart to interpret urine colors. (Photo: Trinity College, Cambridge, CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

A 14th-century dentist extracting teeth. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

A 19th-century facsimile of the 10th-century Bald's Leechbook. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

A selection pf household remedies combined into a book in the 15th century. (Photo: Cambridge University Library/Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED)

h/t: [Smithsonian Magazine, Cambridge University]

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An elementary school teacher teaching, 1877. (Photo: National Institute for Educational Policy Research)

What did your school textbooks look like? Chances are they were old, ripped, and written in. Their computer-printed images were certainly not fine art, especially with other students' layering doodles over the years. However, textbooks do not always have to be boring; they can be works of art. An online archive of historic Japanese textbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries—hosted by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research—exemplifies the textbook as an art form. Decorated in everything from hand painting and calligraphy to traditional block printing, the books are explorable in PDF format for free.

The collection includes artwork such as hanging drawings, elementary primers, and brushwork guides for calligraphy. These works span a broad period, from the 19th century till after World War II—a time of immense change for Japan. Some texts are many pages long, combining elegant writing with detailed illustrations. Horses dance across a page beneath simple characters; whereas in another book, plants found in the garden are illustrated. Others depict teachers and small pupils cross-legged in front of their lecturers. It's fascinating even for those who cannot read Japanese.

Chiefly on display is the artistry of the books' many makers. Woodblock printing is an ancient art, dating back to the 8th century in Japan. These abilities to create books long pre-dated the European invention of the printing press during the Renaissance. Sometimes a block print might create the lines of a drawing, which was then colored in by hand. Other times, artists utilized the “brocade” method, nishiki-e, of using multiple blocks in multiple inks to create an image. It was not until the 20th century that modern print technology began to replace these methods. While modern textbooks might be more conducive to mass production or regular updating, they surely cannot match the charm, elegance, and beauty of these historic tomes.

An archive of centuries’ worth of Japanese textbooks hosted by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research is available online.

A 19th-century elementary school text. (Photo: National Institute for Educational Policy Research)

Many are incredible examples of block printing and illustration.

“Garden Lessons” picture book, 1828. (Photo: National Institute for Educational Policy Research)

An elementary reading book, late 19th century. (Photo: National Institute for Educational Policy Research)

An elementary reading book, late 19th century. (Photo: National Institute for Educational Policy Research)

h/t: [Colossal]

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NGC 5468, a galaxy containing Cepheid variable stars. (Photo: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam G. Riess (JHU, STScI))

From the moment of the Big Bang, our universe started expanding and has not stopped. By studying the red shift of far away galaxies, modern scientists have even determined that the pace of this expansion is increasing. Dark energy pushes this expansion, and astronomers and physicists have struggled to come to terms with what's known as the Hubble Tension. Named for the famed telescope that has been used to study the expanding universe, the conundrum is that, in the words of NASA, “the current rate of the expansion of the universe is faster than what astronomers expect it to be, based on the universe's initial conditions and our present understanding of the universe’s evolution.” This problem and what it says about gaps in our knowledge of the universe has recently been confirmed by researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Until recently, there was some concern that the data—coming from the Hubble Telescope—which underlay the Hubble Tension could itself be flawed. If so, perhaps no true unexplainable problem existed. However, a study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters lays this debate to rest. The study announced that by using the most superior modern techniques, they could eliminate “unrecognized crowding of Cepheid photometry” in Hubble's data as a cause of the mystery. “With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe,” lead author and Nobel Prize-winner Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, said in a NASA statement.

The rate of the expansion of the universe is known as the Hubble constant. However, at the outer reaches of our observable universe, this constant as predicted does not match what is actually happening. The Lambda CDM—the current governing system of measuring universe expansion by examining the cosmic microwave background—breaks down at these points. Another measuring system, used by the paper authors to confirm the Hubble Tension exists, is based on observing Cepheid variables. These are dying, pulsating stars whose light's red-shift can expose the past of the universe. The prior concern was that the further one goes back the cosmic ladder, the more these signals would essentially blur into one another, possibly skewing the data to create the tension.

By finding “no significant difference in the mean distance measurements determined from HST and JWST,” the study clarified the tension does in fact exist. “Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that the Hubble measurements remain reliable as we climb farther along the cosmic distance ladder,” said Riess. This leaves scientists with a problem of immense magnitude in their quest to learn the true origins and present state of the universe. Exactly how fast is it expanding? The JSWT is an essential tool in this study, as it continues to push the boundaries of human knowledge into the final frontier.

The new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed just how much we still do not know about the origins of our universe.

Showing how the Hubble constant is calculated. (Photo: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI))

The Hubble Tension is the name assigned to the problem of accurately understanding just how fast the universe is expanding and why it does not match what we know.

h/t: [Live Science]

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An artist’s impression of the quasar J059-4351. (Photo: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Stars dominate our nighttime visual universes, dazzling us with beauty and sparkle as they rise in the evening and shift with the seasons. Chief among the stars is our Sun, so bright you cannot look directly at it without vision damage. However, stars—and even our Sun—are not the brightest things in the universe. Quasars hold that highest honor. These are celestial phenomenon within the active galactic nuclei category: at the center is a black hole sucking in matter from the surrounding space, including stars themselves. The matter swirls into an accretion disk, where the gas and stars and matter all collide to produce heat, visible to us as light. Excitingly, researchers have discovered the brightest quasar yet known—500 trillion times brighter than our own Sun.

This speck of light in a vast universe was photographed by telescopes in the 1980s but categorized initially as a star. Modern technology has vastly accelerated the process of discovering quasars, as artificial intelligence can be trained to scan for signatures of these phenomena. Last year, researchers using the Siding Spring Observatory and the Very Large Telescope in Chile realized the “star” was in fact a quasar, now known as J0529-4351. According to a statement from the European Southern Observatory, the quasar is 12 billion light-years away, meaning the light we see is from the distant past. “We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date,” Christian Wolf, lead author paper in Nature Astronomy, said in a statement. “It has a mass of 17 billion Suns, and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe.”

The black hole is no longer expanding at the rate it once did. “It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now,” stated co-author Christopher Onken. However, the “past” of the quasar can tell us a lot. Because of its massive size, it is the perfect fit for new techniques intending to measure the mass of black holes. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, a quasar with a light-sucking black hole at its center is the brightest thing in the universe, and the next big thing in astronomy.

Scientists have discovered the brightest quasar yet known, 500 trillion times as bright as our own Sun.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) captures the quasar. (Photo: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Dark Energy Survey)

h/t: [Smithsonian Magazine]

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The necropolis, which is now open to the public. (Photo: Carole Raddato via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

Vatican City is a unique place. As both a country and the headquarters of the Catholic Church, the city is encircled by the wider landscape of Rome, Italy. In the walled city itself, monumental architecture from medieval and Renaissance creators sits atop a wealth of ancient history that has been discovered over the years as new construction projects break ground. Among these revelations was a necropolis, or ancient city of the dead, whose grand extent has been revealed over time. The ancient architecture which lay alongside the ancient Via Triumphalis—which is filled with mosaics and sarcophagi—is now open to the public as of November 2023.

In ancient Rome, bodies of the deceased could not be buried or cremated inside the city walls. So on the outskirts of the metropolis formed a series of necropolis where the ancients were laid to rest. Many lay in small mausoleum structures clustered along Rome's epic roadways, including the Via Triumphalis. Along this road lies the 10,764-square-foot necropolis which is technically now under Vatican City. The public can enter through the Saint Rose Gate in the walls of the Vatican. A series of ramps and paths then allow exploration of the necropolis' remains in an exhibit known as Life and Death in the Rome of the Caesars through the ruins preserved in a mudslide long ago.

Exposed to view are countless mosaics, featuring geometric designs and motifs of the Roman gods. Niches and archways give a sense of the full structures which once existed. Even frescoes remain, decorating for eternity the last resting places. The deceased were buried between the 1st century CE and the 4th century CE. Sarcophagi remain, as do some exposed skeletons. Funerary stelae tell us about these people and their ordinary lives. Among the interred are a Pompeii theater manager and a “saltuarius,” who took care of woodlands.

“We begin to learn about people we did not know, particularly about rituals that seem more related to family, neighborhood, town, or personal traditions than to official religion,” explains Giandomenico Spinola, deputy artistic-scientific director of the Vatican Museums. Leonardo Di Blasi, archaeologist of the Ancient Greek and Roman section of the Vatican Museum, also notes the graves primarily belong to “slaves [of Emperor Nero], freedmen, [and] artisans of the city of Rome,” making the exhibit a fascinating view into the class structure and religious history of Roman burials.

An ancient Roman necropolis, or city of the dead, is now open to the public in the Vatican City.

h/t: [ARTnews, artnet]

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Sheet music from the early 20th century. (Photo: Wikimedia, Public Domain)

What's your favorite musical? Do you belt out “Defying Gravity” when you're alone? Do you still dance anytime “Seasons of Love” from Rent starts playing? Do you still dream of the incredible costumes from The Lion King? Chances are, if you're a Broadway enthusiast or music aficionado, you know George Gershwin's work. Born in 1898, the legendary composer produced classics throughout his short life before dying in 1937. He wrote the opera Porgy and Bess as well as the original Funny Face musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.

Among his works, there was a gap—the musical known as La La Lucille had been missing, its words and music largely unknown for a century. While scholars had previously tried to recreate the lost work, this process took a sudden leap forward with the surprise discovery of the lost, original sheet music by a University of Michigan professor in the Amherst College Archives in Massachusetts.

La La Lucille premiered on Broadway in 1919. It was an important early work of Gershwin's composition, based on a book by Fred Jackson and paired with the lyrics of four authors. It is set on a wild night in New York when a married couple learns of a sudden inheritance, their acceptance of which is conditional on their divorce. The wife, a former showgirl named Lucille, and her husband plan a deception of comic proportions to keep both their love and the money. The music, composed entirely by a brilliant 20-year-old Gershwin, ushers the characters through the plot. However, the loss of sheet music for many songs has reduced these tunes to a few extant piano versions.

University of Michigan scholar Jacob Kerzner was perusing the Amherst College archives in summer 2023. In the Samuel French Collection, he discovered a surprising stack of about 800 pages full of scores. This complete orchestration includes music for flutes, cellos, and other accompanying instruments that had not been heard for almost a century. The musical's last recorded performance, while on the road, was in Massachusetts in 1926. This may be why the scores ended up in Amherst.

In February 2024, music students at the University of Michigan performed songs from the musical alongside this complete music. Junior Aquila Sol sang “Somehow It Seldom Comes True,” while junior Keyon Pickett performed “From Now On.” Professor Jayce Ogren conducted.

“We get to hear these fun flute lines that we hadn’t noticed,” Kerzner told M Live. “We get to warm up some of these ballads with strings, and we get to even see some of the changes in harmony that may not have been published in the piano-vocal, but that George Gershwin or Frank Saddler may have adjusted as they developed this show for Broadway.” A critical edition of the work is also said to be in the works.

The music and lyrics of La La Lucille, a lost Gershwin musical first performed in 1919, were rediscovered a century later by a scholar from the University of Michigan.

“La La Lucille” in its film adaption, 1920. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

The musical, discovered in Amherst College's archives, tells the story of a couple who receives a surprise inheritance.

Listen to some of the long-lost songs yourselves and enjoy the music.

h/t: [M Live]

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Photo: LIGHTSOURCE/Depositphotos

Dementia is an unfortunate condition faced by many in American families. Aging relatives lose their memories and abilities, while families watch the painful process and do all they can. Care remains expensive and, for many, elusive. With America's population swiftly skewing towards the retiring, aging baby boomers, dementia is a high priority field of medical research. But there is some good news. A new study, funded by the National Institute on Aging and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discovered that the prevalence of dementia in those over 65 years old has markedly decreased, despite persisting inequities.

Using data from over 20,000 individuals, the team looked to cognitive tests and clinically diagnosed dementia rates. They analyzed the period from 2000 to 2016 to find the change over the years. They discovered something great: age-adjusted prevalence rates of dementia decreased from 12.2% to 8.5% in 2016. This fall of 3.7% is a distinct improvement, and heralds better news for the large portion of the population which is currently around 65. Interestingly, the quickest decline was in the first four years surveyed, between 2000 and 2004. While improvement is shared across racial, gender, and class lines, not all gains were equal.

Prevalence rates for women remain higher, although they saw a greater drop across the period. Black men too saw a larger drop than white men in prevalence rates, but their current overall prevalence remains higher. In short, the inequities of society seem to parallel inequities in rates of dementia. Better education, less smoking, and better cardiovascular health are all thought to contribute to dementia risk. The researchers specifically found they could trace 40% of the improvement among men to a drastic shift in the college-educated population which was over 65 during the studied period. It rose from 21.5% to 33.7%. Among women there was also an increase resulting in 20% of the reduction in dementia prevalence.

“Closing the education gap across racial and ethnic groups may be a powerful tool to reduce health inequalities in general and dementia inequalities in particular, an important public health policy goal,” the author wrote. Most of those over 65 in the period studied would have been members of the Silent generation and the older Baby Boomers, groups which saw about 15% and 24% earning college degrees. However, Millennials clocked in at 39% as of 2018. As with Gen X, but unlike previous generations, women are now more represented in higher education. More people of color are able to attend college now, compared to the 1960s, despite persistent inequity. It remains to be seen how these shifting demographics influence the declining trend of dementia in future years and future studies.

Since the year 2000, dementia rates have fallen in an encouraging sign—however, gender, race, and class disparities persist.

Photo: RAWPIXEL/Depositphotos

h/t: [RAND]

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The world-renowned painter Claude Monet is famous today, and during his time among his Impressionist peers, for his fascination with natural scenes. Perhaps best known for painting the water lilies at his home at Giverny, he also found beauty in other parts of nature and architecture, including haystacks, cathedrals, and seascapes. Among Monet's paintings, the Seine River makes frequent appearances. He painted his hazy, cool-toned Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (translated as Morning on the Seine, clear weather) over 20 times, varying shades to reflect nature's own changes. Some examples of this series can be found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the White House in Washington, D.C., among other collections. In March 2024, a painting from this series sold at Christie's for an impressive $18.4 million.

This Matinée sur la Seine, temps net series featuring the banks of the river was painted between 1896 and 1897. Monet created his own studio on a boat from which he could observe the chosen vantage. His works reflected shifting weather and light, and are stunning examples of Impressionists' treatment of light. Many of the works were then exhibited at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1898. The works also represent Monet's growing love for Giverny, the picturesque town he adopted in middle age and in which he lived the rest of his years. The painting series focused on where the Seine passes by this locale, rather than in Paris' bustling heart.

The recently auctioned work shows a sunny day beginning to break over the river, fluffy clouds just peeking out. The contemporary critic, Maurice Guillemot, upon viewing the works and interviewing the painter deemed the series “a marvel of contagious emotion and intense poetry.” The last time this specific work was offered at auction was 1978, when it was purchased by an anonymous buyer. This sale hit an impressive figure; however, it pales in comparison to some of Monet's other works—a water lilies painting sold for $74 million in 2023. No matter the price tag, a chance to own a Monet from this series is a rare treat.

A version of Monet's Matinée sur la Seine, temps net sold at auction at Christie's on March 7, 2024, fetching an impressive $18.4 million.

A copy of “Morning on the Seine” currently held at Boston's MFA. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

h/t: [Christie's]

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