OGN Friday

Jul 19, 2024

Wrapping up the week with some upbeat news stories.

The King’s swan marker on the River Thames — David Barber, the King’s swan marker

Swan Upping

The annual colourful medieval tradition of counting swans on the River Thames is nearly completed. "Swan upping" is a royal census of swans on the river which is carried out every July by brightly-dressed crews of "swan uppers" in rowing boats over five days. When they see young swans they shout out "all up" and stop to weigh and measure the swans, before releasing them back into the water. The swan uppers began their journey on a rainy Monday morning in west London and will reach Abingdon in Oxfordshire today. It's a quirky mix of vivid royal spectacle and conservation project, with spectators lining riverbanks and the backs of suburban gardens to watch this flotilla sailing past.

Bronze Age ax heads found in Ireland — Ax heads inside a cardboard flapjack box | National Museum of Ireland

Anonymous Donor

An Irish museum recently received a strange parcel: two 4,000-year-old ax heads, carefully packed in a repurposed flapjack box and mailed by a mystery donor. An unsigned note in the package said the Bronze Age artifacts were discovered with a metal detector in central Ireland, according to a statement from the National Museum of Ireland. The sender, who “expressed a desire for the axeheads to be conserved,” included no further details and provided no contact information.

Smart Soil

Watering and fertilizing crops to provide enough food for a changing world is a major challenge in agriculture. Now, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a “smart soil” that can keep plants better hydrated and provide a controlled release of nutrients. Plants growing in their special hydrogel soil showed a 138 percent boost to their stem length, compared to the control group. Importantly, the hydrogel-grown plants achieved this even while requiring 40 percent less direct watering. “The global water scarcity coupled with a growing population has an immediate impact on food security,” said Guihua Yu, corresponding author of the study. “This new class of hydrogels offers a promising solution to meet the pressing needs of water scarcity and efficient nutrient uptake in modern sustainable agriculture.”

Museo-Therapy

For more than a decade, the French city of Lille’s Palais des Beaux-Arts - which was inaugurated in 1892 and is home to France’s second largest collection behind only the Louvre - has deployed a kind of “museo-therapy” that uses the museum space and the treasures held within it to help treat patients from local hospitals. But in September 2023, this initiative became a little more formal when it signed an agreement with the University Hospital Center of Lille (CHU) to offer 140 museum art therapy sessions over a year to patients who have been given a “museum prescription” by doctors, making it one of the most significant programs of its kind in the world. The idea of a museum prescription, which fits under an umbrella of out-of-hospital, nonclinical treatment known as social prescribing, is that exposure to art and culture or history can complement, accelerate or potentially even displace some forms of medical care in traditional settings - in an effective, enjoyable and low-cost manner.

Some Quick Hits

“China’s carbon dioxide emissions are on track for a first annual decline since 2016,” reports Bloomberg. It may mean that the nation’s emissions peaked in 2023 and will enter into long-term decline, say analysts.

13%: The share of US workers earning under $15 an hour, down from 31.9% in 2022.

112: The number of countries where the death penalty has been abolished for all crimes, up from 48 in 1991.

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." Fred Rogers