The question is, what’s behind the winds?

Okay, today’s word(s) of the day are “polar vortex”. It’s the terminology that all of our local weather stations are using to describe what caused this sudden dip in temperatures. So being the good research librarian that I am (and since I’m off today), I did a little digging around. First I re-read a  couple of recent articles I posted last month in “The arctic ice stirs the world“.

Then I did some more digging and came upon this article entitled “Melting Arctic Ice May Lead to Severe Weather Changes” at SciTechDaily. It goes into great detail how the weakening polar vortex up in the arctic affects the jet stream which then allows the colder air to dip so far south.

Brrrrrrrr!

 

Green Librarian

Howling winds tonight

When I think of the howling wind outside, I’m taken back to the sound of a howling wolf. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a wolf sanctuary somewhere up in southern Indiana with an amazing old friend of mine who passed away several years ago, Bob Yorko. So when saw this article the other day in our local paper, I thought of him.

The article is entitled “Illinois Preps for Possibility of Wolf Population” by Michael Tarm at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. These days I think now of taking my daughter to our local wolf sanctuary here in St. Louis, the Endangered Wolf Center. If you have the same plans buat don’t know where one is, check out this article over at Inhabitat entitled”How to Find a Wolf Sanctuary Near You and Meet Some Wild Wolves” by Jill Fehrenbacher.

Sweet Dreams!

 

Green Librarian

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Cats & dogs or dogs & cats

So as soon as I came across this article, “What Dogs can Teach Kids” by Pete Nelson the other day in an old copy of (the now defunct) Wondertime magazine , I was reminded of a couple of other articles.  One was on cats and one was on dogs.

To make the story more complicated, my kids have dogs with their mom and a cat at our house, with talk of getting a second even though I would rather have a dog.  Confused!? Me too!

Since it’s sort of still Christmas around here as  the tree is till up, I thought I would post three articles here (since I have three kids), two on dogs and one on cats. If I do get a dog, it will probably a Newfoundland. They’re great with kids as we had two when I was younger.

The first one is the aforementioned one on what dogs can teach kids. The other two are on the domestication of cats and dogs. They are “Cat Domestication Traced to Chinese Farmers” and “Domestication of Dogs May Have Elaborated on a Pre-Existing Capacity of Wolves to Learn from Humans“, both at Science Daily.

Chow (or meow)!

 

Green Librarian

 

The crocodile family tree

Apparently the crocodile family has a new branch in the family tree. According to the article “More Crocodile Species Discovered” over at the New York Times, scientist believe that the crocodiles in West Africa are a distinct species that diverged from those in Central Africa somewhere around seven million years ago.

The results of this study were published over at the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and can be found here.

Enjoy!

 

Green Librarian