[PHOTO] Sunflower with bee, Dupont Street

[URBAN NOTE] Five notes about smart animals: bees, wolves/dogs, cetaceans, Denisovans, Neanderthals

• The Conversation notes how urban beekeepers can play a key role in saving bees from extinction.
• Motherboard looks at the comparative intelligence, and generosity, of wolves versus their domesticated dog counterparts.
• National Geographic looks at how marine mammals, particularly cetaceans, have been used in different militaries.
• Smithsonian Magazine looks at how recent studies have demonstrated the diversity among Denisovan populations.
• Smithsonian Magazine looks at the new consensus about the remarkable capabilities of Neanderthals.

[NEWS] Five science links: global warming, bees, Balsillie, backups, Neanderthals

• New estimates suggest the costs of global warming will be in the tens of trillions of dollars, with warmer countries taking a particularly big hit. Motherboard reports.
• Indigenous bumblebee populations in Canada are fast approaching extinction, with a certainty of major negative environmental effects. CBC reports.
• MacLean’s reports on the return to prominence of Jim Balsillie, this time not so much as a tech mogul as a sort off tech skeptic.
• This Motherboard article makes a somewhat far-fetched argument that Game of Thrones demonstrates the need for human civilization to have backups.
• The Conversation reports on the recent discovery, in Serbia by a joint Serbian-Canadian team, of a Neanderthal tooth, and what this discovery means for our understanding of the deep past of humanity.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Kingston, Montréal, Wichita, Vancouver, New York City

• After years of renovations, the Kingston Frontenac Public Library is set to reopen to the public this weekend. Global News reports.
• McGill is taking care of the tens of thousands of ants in a colony displaced from the Insectarium in Montréal during renovations there. CBC reports.
• Russell Arben Fox writes about the politics and economics of funding a new baseball stadium in the Kansas city of Wichita.
• Where will the 4/20 marijuana celebration be held in Vancouver in 2020? Global News reports.
• This article at Slate explains how lower Manhattan can only be protected from rising sea levels by land reclamation.

[NEWS] Seven links about animal intelligence: orangutans, chimpanzees, humpback whales, fish, bees

• Orangutans are smart enough to talk about things not immediately present, D-Brief notes.
• The Crux notes that chimpanzees apparently have not developed small talk.
• The remarkable evolution of the songs of humpback whales over time looks a lot like the evolution of pop culture among humans, I think. D-Brief reports.
• Vox notes how, in many ways, trying to understand and communicate with humpback whales is so close to SETI.
• This article at The Conversation looks at a recent adoption of a narwhal into a group of belugas. What does it mean about these species’ social relationships?
• Gizmodo notes that, recently, the species of fish known as the cleaner wrasse passed the mirror test for self-awareness. What does this mean about fish intelligence? What does this mean about the test?
• Honeybees, it turns out, can add and subtract. Motherboard reports.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• The Big Picture shares some of the Boston Globe’s most noteworthy photos from January.
• Centauri Dreams hosts Larry Klaes’ review of the 1972 sci-fi film Silent Running.
• Dangerous Minds reports on a 1988 documentary of a spontaneous street Superbowl party, Show Us Your Belly.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the dependence of pandas on bamboo as a major foodstuff is actually recent, perhaps a consequence of a recent contraction in the territory of the panda.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on one NASA scientist’s examination of what we need to do to progress more rapidly in space travel.
• Gizmodo notes that the Parker Solar Probe is heading for another close rendezvous with the Sun.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, in cities, environments like gardens and hotel patios can be used to provide shelter for bees.
• Language Hat looks at some of the unusual names given by Puritan parents to their children in 17th century England.
• The LRB Blog looks at how, in its ongoing state of emergency, France is repressing peaceful protest.
• The Map Room Blog notes how climate zones are shifting as the world climate changes.
• Marginal Revolution notes how population growth is so much more rapid in the modern developing world than in 19th century Europe, simply because of the lower mortality rates of our era.
• Rocky Planet looks at primordial bodies in our solar system, like asteroids and Kuiper belt objects.
• Mark Simpson looks at how a 1970s BBC comedy show, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum, played with norms of sexuality and gender.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the potentially revolutionary implications if dark energy turns out to not be a constant.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, if nuclear weapons were not involved, Japan could win a naval war with Russia over the Kurils.

[NEWS] Ten D-Brief links

• Did extraterrestrial sugars seed life on Earth? D-Brief reports.
• A detailed simulation suggests how black holes can function as natural particle accelerators. D-Brief reports.
• This trompe l’oeil photo seemingly combines the two Saturnian moons of Dione and Rhea. D-Brief shares this.
• Evidence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars is strangely lacking. D-Brief reports.
• Astronomers found, with help from a quasar, a patch of gas in deep intergalactic space apparently a pure sampling from the Big Bang. D-Brief reports.
• A species of midge has become an invasive species in Antarctica. D-Brief reports.
• Plants have been made to grow in space. D-Brief reports.
• These remarkable images of Ultima Thule from New Horizons shows a two-lobed world. D-Brief shares them.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the effect of climate change could lead to greater electricity consumption in China. D-Brief reports.
• Congratulations are due to China for the successful landing of the Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon.

[NEWS] Ten JSTOR Daily links (@jstor_daily)

JSTOR Daily is a quality source of links that can accumulate quickly.

• JSTOR Daily shares ten poems about travel.
• JSTOR Daily notes the decidedly mixed environmental legacies of missionaries.
• JSTOR Daily explains why, exactly, a landlord in the medieval world might ask for a rose at Christmas time as rent.
• JSTOR Daily explores the immersive cyclorama of the 19th century.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, with a canny emphasis on the prestige of their drink and their lineages, dealers of champagne were able to build lucrative empires.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the 17th century German painter of insects Maria Sibylla Merian, now at last gaining recognition.
• JSTOR Daily summarizes a paper that examines why the literal image of Nelson Mandela is so popular, is so iconic.
• JSTOR Daily notes that, alas, the balance of the evidence suggests alcohol is not good for people.
• JSTOR Daily looks at “story papers”, the inexpensive 19th century periodicals carrying stories targeted at boys and young men which ended up changing both popular literature and gender identities.
• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily takes a look, after Rachel Giese, at the ways in which the Internet and Internet culture can lead to outbreaks of misogyny.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the remarkable amount of information produced by a study of globular clusters in the Coma cluster of galaxies.
• Crooked Timber notes the decision of British prosecutors to charge the Stansted 15, people who prevented a flight from taking off with reject asylum claimants, with terrorism-related offenses.
• The Crux notes some of the remarkable evolutionary tricks that let different insects develop ears and the sense of hearing.
• D-Brief notes that the Voyager 2 probe has exited the heliosphere, arguably leaving the solar system.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes how digital media accentuate the modern world’s fragmentation and exhaustion of time.
• Information is Beautiful shares the results of this year’s Information is Beauty awards, sharing all sorts of impressive data visualization products including the winner.
• JSTOR Daily notes some lessons about monks’ organization of time; productivity improvements, with better technology, were used not to increase production but rather to free up time for other uses.
• Language Hat links to a BBC article noting the potential that machine translation offers for the understanding of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, most of which are untranslated.
• Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca announces that, after years of operation, this blog will be closed before the end of the month.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Jason Davis announces that the OSIRIS-REx probe has detected water on asteroid 101955 Bennu.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw notes the death of his Canadian relative, the anthropologist Cyril Belshaw.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why we have not yet found Earth analog planets.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the leadership of Chechnya has been criticizing neighbouring Dagestan for its treatment of Chechens there.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the grooves of Phobos, and describes the latest theory behind the formation of this strange feature on the largest Martian moon.
• Centauri Dreams notes the first detection of helium in an exoplanet atmosphere, from hot Neptune HAT-P-11b.
• D-Brief notes how new dating technologies, drawing on artifacts from Toronto sites, reveal that European contact with the Iroquois came at a much later date than previously thought.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Russia has pushed its plans for a crewed Moon landing back a decade, to 2040.
• Gizmodo notes that the Large Hadron Collider is going to be shut down for a couple of years, for repairs and upgrading.
• JSTOR Daily took a look at how forest fires work in Finland, particularly in contrast to those of California.
• Roger Shuy at Lingua Franca notes, looking at a famous American legal case, how the way we ask questions really does matter.
• Marginal Revolution notes, in passing, the economic stagnation of Portugal in the past two decades, with very little growth over this time.
• The NYR Daily shares an interview with the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in which he talks about how our era has trivialized evil.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how disagreements between different scientists using different methods to measure the expansion of the universe reveal that, somewhere, something is incorrect. But what?
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society looks at corruption as a sociological phenomenon.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the idea of the ongoing insect apocalypse.