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  • Study: Third of Big Groundwater Basins in Distress

    Aquifers in Distress

    Groundwater storage trends for Earth’s 37 largest aquifers from UCI-led study using NASA GRACE data (2003 – 2013). Of these, 21 have exceeded sustainability tipping points and are being depleted, with 13 considered significantly distressed, threatening regional water security and resilience. Image Credit: UC Irvine/NASA/JPL-Caltech
    › Larger image

    About one third of Earth’s largest groundwater basins are being rapidly depleted by human consumption, despite having little accurate data about how much water remains in them, according to two new studies led by the University of California, Irvine (UCI), using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites.

    This means that significant segments of Earth’s population are consuming groundwater quickly without knowing when it might run out, the researchers conclude. The findings are published today in Water Resources Research.

    “Available physical and chemical measurements are simply insufficient,” said UCI professor and principal investigator Jay Famiglietti, who is also the senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Given how quickly we are consuming the world’s groundwater reserves, we need a coordinated global effort to determine how much is left.”

    The studies are the first to comprehensively characterize global groundwater losses with data from space, using readings generated by NASA’s twin GRACE satellites. GRACE measures dips and bumps in Earth’s gravity, which are affected by the mass of water. In the first paper, researchers found that 13 of the planet’s 37 largest aquifers studied between 2003 and 2013 were being depleted while receiving little to no recharge.

    Eight were classified as “overstressed,” with nearly no natural replenishment to offset usage. Another five were found to be “extremely” or “highly” stressed, depending upon the level of replenishment in each. Those aquifers were still being depleted but had some water flowing back into them.

    The most overburdened aquifers are in the world’s driest areas, where populations draw heavily on underground water. Climate change and population growth are expected to intensify the problem.

    “What happens when a highly stressed aquifer is located in a region with socioeconomic or political tensions that can’t supplement declining water supplies fast enough?” asked Alexandra Richey, the lead author on both studies, who conducted the research as a UCI doctoral student. “We’re trying to raise red flags now to pinpoint where active management today could protect future lives and livelihoods.”

    The research team — which included co-authors from NASA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Taiwan University and UC Santa Barbara — found that the Arabian Aquifer System, an important water source for more than 60 million people, is the most overstressed in the world.

    The Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern India and Pakistan is the second-most overstressed, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa is third. California’s Central Valley, used heavily for agriculture and suffering rapid depletion, was slightly better off, but was still labeled highly stressed in the first study.

    “As we’re seeing in California right now, we rely much more heavily on groundwater during drought,” said Famiglietti. “When examining the sustainability of a region’s water resources, we absolutely must account for that dependence.”

    In a companion paper published today in the same journal, the scientists conclude that the total remaining volume of the world’s usable groundwater is poorly known, with estimates that often vary widely. The total groundwater volume is likely far less than rudimentary estimates made decades ago. By comparing their satellite-derived groundwater loss rates to what little data exist on groundwater availability, the researchers found major discrepancies in projected “time to depletion.” In the overstressed Northwest Sahara Aquifer System, for example, time to depletion estimates varied between 10 years and 21,000 years.

    “We don’t actually know how much is stored in each of these aquifers. Estimates of remaining storage might vary from decades to millennia,” said Richey. “In a water-scarce society, we can no longer tolerate this level of uncertainty, especially since groundwater is disappearing so rapidly.”

    The study notes that the dearth of groundwater is already leading to significant ecological damage, including depleted rivers, declining water quality and subsiding land.

    Groundwater aquifers are typically located in soils or deeper rock layers beneath Earth’s surface. The depth and thickness of many large aquifers make it tough and costly to drill or otherwise reach bedrock and understand where the moisture bottoms out. But it has to be done, the authors say.

    To read the technical papers, visit:

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015WR017349/abstract

    and

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015WR017351/abstract

    GRACE is a joint mission with the German Aerospace Center and the German Research Center for Geosciences, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin. JPL developed the GRACE spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

  • Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: A Brilliant Goldfinich Growing Up, A Respected Dandelion Herb and The Wandering Lily of the Valley

     Goldfinch Growing Up

    goldfinch

    The male American Goldfinch is a brilliant bird. His bright yellow feathers attract the attention not only of the female goldfinch but of anyone nearby. It’s hard to ignore, or take for granted, the almost neon quality of him on the feeder. He is regal.
     
    He doesn’t start out that way, though. The baby bird is scrawny and demanding. As he grows, the young bird starts to fill out his feathers but they are splotchy and not very attractive, yellow mixed with gray in an exuberant disarray. There is nothing graceful about him, which is endearing in its own way.
     
    It reminds me of a boy’s growing years. He starts out as a cute but demanding baby and slowly grows into his teen years when his voice breaks in mid-word, his face starts to get stubble, and he outgrows the sleeves of his shirt and the legs of his pants almost on a daily basis. Eventually, the boy finds his balance and the awkwardness slips away. He, like the goldfinch, shines in his youthful maturity.
     
    It seems that nature mirrors itself, whatever the species. Regardless of the outside, the inside of us all develops in our own particular ways and that gets reflected externally. I find the young goldfinch on my feeder exciting, knowing that it will soon become something stunning — even if he doesn’t know it yet.
     
    So much to know about American Goldfinches:

     http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Goldfinch/lifehistory

     
     

    Seeds are Everywhere!Dandelions

     
    Have you noticed? Seeds are everywhere! Maple trees are sending their seeds spinning around the neighborhood. They whirl through the air at the slightest breeze and land on everything. The yellow dandelion flowers have changed into fairy seeds, catching the slightest movement of wind or breath to send them into new growing places. Pollen coats cars and houses, lawns, patio and deck furniture and people, if we can judge by the sneezes caused by allergic reactions to the powdery stuff. Leave a flowerpot filled with plain dirt outside and soon something will be growing there. Spring is a time for regeneration.
     
    While we may have made a gazillion wishes blowing on dandelion seeds as kids (and kids still do) we adults seem to have lost our fondness for the plant. It does have a way of taking over a lawn. It is resilient to the point of defiance. Yet the dandelion has been a valued herb over the centuries. Almost every part of it has some health benefit. And while most of us are trying to rid our lawns of them, dandelion seeds are being sold with a host of other, more respected herbs.
     
    So maybe we can give the dandelion a break and remember it has a beneficial purpose even if we choose not to cultivate it on our lawns. And perhaps once in a while forget that we are grown up, lift the stem gently from the ground, take a breath and blow out a wish!
     
    What to value about dandelions and what to be careful of health wise:

     

  • Congressional Bills Introduced: Abortion, Encouraging STEM Education, Affordable Birth Control and Child Care Credits

    Bills IntroducedWeekly coffee w/Patty Murray

    Every Wednesday morning when the Senate is in session, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) (far right, standing) hosts a weekly coffee for Washington state constituents. This is an opportunity for Washington state residents who are visiting the nation’s capitol to meet Senator Murray and chat briefly with her. Families are welcome to bring their children to the coffee.

    Abortion

    S. 1553—Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)/Judiciary (6/11/15)—A bill to protect pain-capable unborn children, and for other purposes. [Editor’s Note: Senator Graham is an announced candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016. Here is one website’s take on his position on the issue of abortion: http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Lindsey_Graham_Abortion.htm. His own website currently doesn’t address the issue: http://www.lindseygraham.com/]

    H.R. 2761—Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)/Judiciary (6/12/15)—A bill to provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.

    Child Protection

    H.R. 2764—Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)/Education and the Workforce (6/12/15)—A bill to strengthen the provisions relating to child labor.

    Education

    H.R. 2762—Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA)/Education and the Workforce (6/12/15)—A bill to provide grants to eligible local educational agencies to encourage female students to pursue studies and careers in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.

    Family Support

    S. 1525—Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)/Finance (6/8/15)—A bill to block any action from being taken to finalize or give effect to a certain proposed rule governing the federal child support enforcement program.

    H.R. 2688—Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)/Ways and Means (6/9/15)—A bill to block any action from being taken to finalize or give effect to a certain proposed rule governing the federal child support enforcement program.

    S. 1539—Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)/Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (6/10/15)—A bill to establish a permanent, nationwide summer electronic benefits transfer for children program.

    H.R. 2715—Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA)/Education and the Workforce (6/10/15)—A bill to establish a permanent, nationwide summer electronic benefits transfer for children program.

  • Flaming June Has Taken Up Residence in the Oval Room at the Frick

    —Flaming Junr

    “A remarkable study for Flaming June, one of the best known of all Pre-Raphaelite paintings, has been discovered hanging discreetly behind a bedroom door in an English country mansion.

    “The discovery of the head study for Sir Frederic Leighton’s picture was announced on Friday — one of many extraordinary secrets to emerge from a 16th-century manor house owned by Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe until her death, aged 99, last year.

    “The heir, to his immense surprise, was her great-nephew Bamber Gascoigne, former host of University Challenge.

    “He has vowed to begin carrying out the essential restoration needed to secure the house’s future and has arranged with Sotheby’s to sell objects from the house which paint a picture of an England that no longer exists.

    “The Leighton drawing is particularly exciting. Simon Toll, Sotheby’s Victorian art specialist, said finding it behind the door of a small, dark anteroom off the duchess’s bedroom was “thrilling … one of the most heart-stopping moments in my career”. 

    — From The Guardian 

    Read the original post from January 23 of this year

    ‘Next summer, The Frick Collection will present Sir Frederic Leighton’s celebrated painting Flaming June from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. This monumental image of a sleeping woman in a brilliant orange gown is a masterpiece of British painting that has never been shown publicly in New York City. Indeed, as a collection highlight of its home institution, the work is seldom lent and is rarely shown in the United States. The work will be installed on a wall in the center of the Oval Room, surrounded by the Frick’s four full-length portraits by James McNeill Whistler, an artist who was part of Leighton’s London circle. Both artists responded in different ways to the Aesthetic movement, a precursor to modernism.”

  • Lessons From a Lifetime in the Classroom: YOU and I, ME, US, THEY, THEM, WHATEVER!

    By Julia Sneden

    Pronouns, pronouns, pronouns: does no one these days teach youngsters how to use them?

    The other day a bemused friend quoted from a sweet letter she had received:

    “Just seeing your face at Mike and I’s wedding …”Grammar

    Unbelievable, you say? Even more unbelievable is the fact that the writer is a graduate student at a major university. The child obviously doesn’t lack brains; what she lacks is proper training in the use of her native tongue. And, perhaps, an introduction to the word “our,” which would have been a quick rescue as well as referencing what the ceremony had been all about.

    Gramatica from a series of copperplate engravings by Virgil Solis:  National Gallery of Art, Washington 

    Had the young woman been writing on her computer, not by hand as etiquette demands, the letter would have been less charming but more grammatically correct, since Spell-check would doubtless have caught her error.Of course that wouldn’t prevent her from hitting the “Ignore” button and leaving it as is, but let’s give her and Spell-check the benefit of that doubt.

    In fact, Spell-check may prove a better instructor than many of the elementary school teachers turned out by our universities. Back in the ’50’s, my mother made quite a bit of pocket money by correcting the dissertations of graduate students seeking doctorates in Education. Her efforts often went beyond merely correcting grammar, because many of those students lacked the ability to present their ideas logically, in clear prose. The writers tended to use big words, but unfortunately they often didn’t use them correctly in either syntax or meaning. Mother tacked a sign saying ‘Eschew Obfuscation’ over her desk. She was rarely asked what it meant.

    Somehow we have forgotten how to teach grammar using simple, clear rules. When I was young, we were introduced to the difference between subjective and objective and possessive pronouns at an early age. I remember my fourth grade teacher parsing the subjective pronouns with us: “I, you, he-she-it; we, you, they,” and then demonstrating how and where to use them in a sentence.

    After a few days of that, there was literally no chance that any of us would begin a sentence using “Her and me went to the store,” because we were well aware that her and me weren’t subject material. Trickier to handle were cases where one needed two objective pronouns, but Miss Bartram had a quick remedy for our confusions there. If we didn’t know which case to use in a sentence like “The teacher gave Maddy and (I? me?) a lecture,” she said to drop “Maddy” from the sentence and listen to it in our minds:  “She gave I a lecture” was obviously not something we’d say.

    In this day and age, I’m not sure that strategy would work (see “Mike and I’s wedding” above), but it has worked for me for all the years since I was nine.

    The structure of our language receives little attention nowadays, perhaps because the teachers themselves have had little exposure to its rules. Our grandparents were drilled, as was I, on things like case and tense and the voice of verbs. That rarely happens today.

    Learning about English grammar first was a big help when I began to study a foreign language. These days, learning a foreign language is about the only way kids discover English grammar, a true back-formation of grammatical concepts that probably doubles the difficulty for the teachers of foreign languages.

    There is little direct teaching of the structure of the English language now. Instead, teachers emphasize things that can be easily checked, i.e. tests using right-wrong answers which a teacher can grade quickly. This approach favors things like spelling tests, or tests that offer true/false answers as opposed to open-ended essays. The kind of testing that asks students to memorize facts does little to encourage logical thinking, or critical skills, or the organization and clarity of written response.

    Prepping kids for the weekly Friday spelling test can, of course, be excused on the basis that English is the devil’s own language when it comes to spelling. Our native tongue is a polyglot, with words borrowed wholesale from just about every other language in the world. This causes hundreds of exceptions to what should be the simple rules of phonics. These days, teachers refer to such words as “rule-breakers” or “outlaw words,” in an effort to identify them and make memorizing them a bit of challenging fun for the children.

    Perhaps it is time to throw in the towel and move to true phonetic spelling, as the Russians did by fiat in 1920. That threw the old folks for a loop, but by golly, anyone who learns the phonics of the Russian alphabet today can pronounce the words aloud, even if they don’t know the meaning. And you’d better believe that Russian children are good spellers.

    Again, it may be Spell-check that leads us to phonetic spelling, although it often doesn’t catch misspelled homonyms, accepting bear for bare, for example. We will have to hone our skills in interpreting context, unless some genius will come up with an easy way to differentiate being bare from seeing a bare. Until then, as long as we’re without phonetic spelling, we surely need to proof-read what we’ve written very carefully before we hit ‘PRINT.’

    It is long past time for those who certify elementary school teachers to insist that school teachers themselves speak and write correct English. I know of a third grade teacher who taught her class that “it’s” was a possessive pronoun. I shudder to think how many of her students to this day use “it’s” incorrectly. My memory from 1945 hears to this day dear Miss Bartram’s chanted mantra of: “The meaning of ‘I-T-apostrophe-S’ is always, exclusively, and only-ever: ‘it is.’”

    Tell that to Spell-check.

    Teaching grammar is not an impossible task. If Miss Bartram could handle a class of 35 squirmy nine-year-olds back in 1945, teachers today should be able to manage it too, even without their electronic whiz-bangs. But that won’t happen until we take a few steps back and teach the teachers of our teachers the English language.

    * I take it back. In typing this, Spell-check did indeed intervene. Its suggestion to replace “I’s” was “I am.” A fat lot of help that was!

    © Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

  • Linking Released Inmates to Health Care

    By Michael Ollove, StatelineShira Savit, Executive Director, Transitions

    Joe Calderon faced uncomfortably high odds of dying after his release from a California prison in 2010. According to one study, his chances of dying within two weeks — especially from a drug overdose, heart disease, homicide or suicide — were nearly 13 times greater than for a person who had never been incarcerated.

    Dr. Shira Shavit, Executive Director, Transitions

    Despite suffering from hypertension during his 17 years and three days of incarceration, Calderon was lucky. He stumbled onto a city of San Francisco program that paid for health services for ex-offenders, and he was directed to Transitions Clinic, which provides comprehensive primary care for former prisoners with chronic illnesses. The clinic saw to all his health needs in the months after his release.

    An increasing number of states are striving to connect released prisoners like Calderon to health care programs on the outside. Frequently, that means enrolling them in Medicaid and scheduling appointments for medical services before they are released. Some state programs — in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example — provide help to all outgoing prisoners. Programs in some other states are more targeted. Those in Rhode Island and New York, for instance, focus on ex-offenders with HIV or AIDS.

    Elsewhere, probation and parole are being used to encourage ex-offenders to adhere to certain treatments. Utah, for example, passed a measure this year that cuts probation time for former prisoners if they get treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.

    The goal of these programs isn’t just to address the health needs of a notoriously unhealthy population, but to improve the likelihood they will succeed in society.

    “We want to support them as much as possible to make sure they are productive and do not return to prison,” said Dr. Shira Shavit, executive director of Transitions.

    Many ex-offenders who served long sentences were young when they were locked up and health care wasn’t a concern for them. While in prison, they didn’t have to worry about choosing doctors, scheduling appointments, or acquiring or managing their own medications.

    “They are people who probably haven’t accessed health care outside of (emergency rooms) or anywhere,” said Jesse Jannetta, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. “Oftentimes, they are people who have been diagnosed for the first time while in prison. On the outside, they don’t know where to go to access care.”

    Calderon now helps them as a health care worker with Transitions, which operates 14 clinics catering to ex-prisoners in six states and Puerto Rico.

    “Navigating the health care system can be confusing to the average Joe, let alone someone who has been locked away for many decades,” he said.

    Until recently, many ex-prisoners had limited access to health care. It can be difficult for former inmates to find work, so many of them didn’t have health insurance through an employer. And most states didn’t allow childless, non-disabled adults to sign up for Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance system for low-income Americans.

    The Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed that by extending Medicaid eligibility to all adults whose income is less than 138 percent of the poverty line. (For an individual, that’s an annual income of less than $16,243.) In the 29 states plus D.C. that have elected to expand Medicaid under the ACA, many released prisoners are immediately eligible for Medicaid.

    But that doesn’t mean they all enroll in the program. That’s where many states, often in conjunction with nonprofits, have stepped in with programs like Transitions in California.

    It isn’t possible for Transitions to make contact with all prisoners who are about to be released. So program staffers are out in the community looking for former inmates, hoping to enroll them in Medicaid and to direct them to the San Francisco clinic. “We find them in (emergency rooms), literally on street corners, in homeless centers,” said Shavit, Transitions’ executive director.

    Shavit said clinics like hers cannot keep ex-offenders healthy if other aspects of their re-entry aren’t addressed, such as employment or job training, housing and transportation. Shavit said Transition Clinics across the country have seen about 2,000 ex-offenders since the first one opened in 2006 in San Francisco.

    “For someone on insulin and homeless, with no refrigerator or access to food, it’s impossible to manage their disease successfully,” Shavit said.

  • Portraiture at the Morgan: While Wearing a Cape, Asleep, In A Fur-trimmed Coat, Holding a Skull and Tulip

    Ghezzi self-portrait











    Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674-1755), Self-Portrait, ca. 1730, Pen and brown ink over traces of graphite on paper. Gift of János Scholz, 1985, The Morgan Library & Museum

    Drawing is often seen as the most immediate of the fine arts, capturing a subject’s essence in quick, suggestive strokes of chalk, pencil, or ink. This can be particularly evident in portrait drawing where the dynamism of the medium allows for the recording of a likeness in the here and now, while simultaneously offering clues into the relationship between artist and sitter.

    In a new exhibition titled  Life Lines: Portrait Drawings from Dürer to Picasso the Morgan Library & Museum takes visitors on a fascinating exploration of the genre. Spanning five centuries and including more than fifty works — from Dürer’s moving sketch of his brother Endres to Picasso’s highly expressive portrait of the actress Marie Derval — the show features treasures from the Morgan’s collection as well as a number of notable drawings from private holdings. The exhibition is on view through September 8.Marie Derval portrait by Picasso

    Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Marie Derval, 1901, Pen and brush and black ink over graphite, on wove paper, 19 3/4 x 12 5/8 inches (500 x 321 mm) Thaw Collection, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Photography by Steven H. Crossot, 2014 © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society

    “Life Lines is aptly named as no medium quite captures a person or the connection between artist and sitter like drawing,” said Peggy Fogelman, acting director of the Morgan. “Whether a dashed-off sketch of family life by Rembrandt or a preparatory study for a famous marble bust by Bernini, each work in this revealing exhibition is a window into a personal world.” The drawings in the exhibition are organized thematically into four sections: Self-Portraits; Family and Friends; Formal Portraits; and a final grouping, entitled Portraits?, that explores the boundaries of this type of work. The pieces range from early studies for paintings and sculptures to highly-finished drawings that stand alone as works in their own right. What all of them share, however, is the image of a likeness of someone worth remembering, bearing testimony to the deeply human sentiment to leave a mark.

    THE EXHIBITION
    I. Self-Portraits are hardly a new phenomenon. Many artists have recorded their own likeness over the past five hundred years, and examples in this section range from Palma il Giovane (1544-1628) to Henri Matisse (1869- 1954). Some artists like to faithfully record their image looking into a mirror. Others embed their likeness in a decorative or narrative context, often showing themselves as artists. Italian Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674-1755), for example, portrays himself in fanciful costume, while holding a caricature of his likeness wearing a cape. This humorous work is a self-portrait within a self-portrait, demonstrating the whimsy of an artist best known for his ironic sketches of both Rome’s citizenry as well as notable visitors to the ancient city. Ghezzi’s two depictions of himself seem to stand facing one another, one pointing his finger at the other, as if in conversation.Two portraits of Saskia

    II. Family and Friends:  Many of the drawings presented of family and friends are not given the trappings of formal portraiture. They record the people closest to the artists: their children, spouse, siblings, and friends. Some of these drawings, such as Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) sketch of his wife Saskia asleep, are particularly intimate. Albrecht Dürer’s (1471-1528) drawing of his younger brother Endres can be identified thanks to a portrait of him at the Albertina in Vienna. While that portrait, dated and inscribed, shows Endres on his thirtieth birthday, the drawing in Life Lines appears to be slightly later. More stylized than the earlier version, it shows Endres clad in a fur-trimmed coat and wearing his beret boldly aslant.

    Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606-1669), Two Studies of Saskia Asleep, ca. 1635-37, Pen and brown ink and wash on paper. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909, The Morgan Library & Museum.

  • Rembrandt? The Case of Saul and David, a Patchwork of Canvases

    Saul and David

    Provenance of Saul and David

    The Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague, Netherlands could trace the provenance of Saul and David to 1830, when it was sold from the collection of the Duke of Caraman in Paris as a painting by Rembrandt.

    It remained in Paris, sold on through various auctions, until it ended up with the dealer Durand-Ruel in 1869. It then passed from collection to collection until it was back with Durand-Ruel between 1891 and 1898. The dealer apparently had trouble selling the painting, perhaps because the great Rembrandt connoisseur Wilhelm von Bode had expressed doubts about the authenticity of the work during an exhibition in 1876. In his search for a buyer, Durand-Ruel even took the picture to the United States, where it was exhibited in New York and Chicago in 1893.

    In 1898, Saul and David starred at the large Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam, at the time still in the hands of an art dealer. The director of the Mauritshuis, Abraham Bredius, was immediately sold and bought the painting with his own money for a lofty sum. There was no doubt in his mind that this was one of Rembrandt’s most important paintings.

    Saul and David became one of Rembrandt’s most admired works, mainly thanks to Bredius, who seems to have had a personal connection with the painting. A music lover, he felt emotionally involved with the subject matter and identified with the figure of Saul. After buying the picture, Bredius gave it on loan to the Mauritshuis and launched a hugely successful public relations campaign in the press, even claiming to have sold his own coach-and-four to finance the acquisition. The painting captured the public imagination and rich American collectors offered great sums to buy it — in vain. Bredius left Saul and David to the Mauritshuis when he died in 1946.

    Attribution

    The bubble burst in 1969, when Horst Gerson de-attributed the work, with the devastating comment: ‘Ever since this famous picture – which does not have an old history – was acquired by A. Bredius in 1898 for exhibition in the Mauritshuis, it has been hailed as one of Rembrandt’s greatest and most personal interpretations of Biblical history. (…) I fear that the enthusiasm has a lot to do with a taste for Biblical painting of a type that appealed specially to the Dutch public of the Jozef Israëls generation, rather than with the intrinsic quality of the picture itself.’

    This assessment must have been due, at least in part, to the painting’s condition. Although structurally sound, it certainly looked the worse for wear. The two figures were relatively well preserved, although worn in places. The painting had been restored in Berlin in 1899–1900 by Alois Hauser, who gave the insert at top right a dark tone and partially overpainted the curtain. The prominent vertical join and added piece were disfiguring. The paint surface was heavily flattened throughout, and the old varnish was yellowed and cracked.Working on Saul and David

    Many eminent scholars, including Jakob Rosenberg, criticized Gerson’s rejection of the painting. In 1978, A.B. de Vries (former director of the Mauritshuis), M. Tóth-Ubbens and W. Froentjes published a book titled Rembrandt in the Mauritshuis, in which they argued that the stylistic inconsistencies in the picture could be explained by the fact that Rembrandt painted Saul and David in two phases, in the mid-1650s and the mid-1660s. But weaknesses in the painting convinced other scholars that it could not have been painted by Rembrandt. Henry Adams suggested an attribution to Karel van de Pluym (1625–1672) in 1984. Christian Tümpel proposed an unidentified Rembrandt pupil as the author of the picture. In 1993, Ben Broos tentatively assigned the work to Willem Drost (1633–1659), but Jonathan Bikker subsequently rejected this attribution.

    Last year, however, Ernst van de Wetering published the work as entirely by Rembrandt, executed in circa 1646 and circa 1652. The full attribution of the painting Saul and David to Rembrandt is also the conclusion of eight years of research by a large team of international experts under the leadership of the Mauritshuis.

    Restoration

    The condition of Saul and David was not ideal. Although structurally sound, it certainly looked the worse for wear. The two figures were relatively well preserved, although worn in places. The prominent vertical join and added piece were disfiguring. The paint surface was heavily flattened throughout, and the old varnish was yellowed and cracked.

    Petria Noble, then Head of Conservation at the Mauritshuis, began a careful and gradual removal of the varnish and the overpaint, informed by the new research and intended to improve the painting’s appearance. What emerged was a patchwork of canvases. Surprisingly, a strip at the bottom was found to display fingers, which proved to come from the same canvas (the Van Dyck copy) as the large piece at the upper right. Carol Pottasch and Susan Smelt continued with the treatment.

    The aim was not to completely disguise the painting’s history. The seams between the different pieces of canvas are still visible if you look very closely, but they no longer interfere with the painting’s overall appearance.

  • Is the Queen Bee Lack of Effectiveness In ‘Availability’ to Blame? Bee Informed Partnership Releases Another Discouraging Report About Bee Colony Loss

     

      Beekeeper of the White House w/bees

    Beekeeper Charlie Brandts works with the beehive on the South Grounds of the White House, May 29, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

    Editor’s Note: When we went food shopping recently, my husband held up some of those wonderful bear-shaped squeeze bottles of honey, asking, “Why are these so expensive now?”  Though I didn’t respond with a “Haven’t you been reading seniorwomen.com’s inclusion of bee colony collapse or the trucking of bee hives across the US?”,  we’ll just publish another report about declining numbers of honey bees.

    We found that last year the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA may have indicated that a ‘poorly performing queen’ might be another cause for underproduction:

    “An international team of researchers led by Penn State University has found that a queen bee’s effectiveness at communicating ‘availability’ to potential mates could be a key factor in the future well-being of the colony.  Queens use chemicals called pheromones to provide detailed information to potential mates on their reproductive status.  That information is important because queen bees that mate with several males provide their colonies greater genetic diversity and a higher chance of survival.  On the other hand, these pheromones also signal when a queen has not mated well — and worker bees tend to remove poorly-mated queens.”A TerraTrellis project, bee bungalow

    A bee ‘bungalow’ by TerraTrellis.com

    “The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture provided nearly $400,000 to fund the project. The team, comprised of researchers from Penn State, North Carolina State University, and Tel Aviv University, investigated the effects of four naturally-occurring stressors — mating number, nutrition, virus infection, and environmental toxins — on queen and worker physiology, behavior, and social interactions.” 

    ” ‘We found little impact of nutrition, pesticides and viruses on queen pheromone production and worker responses to the pheromone, which suggests that queens are really adapted to signaling their mating status,’ said Dr. Christina Grozinger, director of Penn State’s Center for Pollinator Research.”

    Hmmm. Is the female always to blame? Maybe we should consult that other Queen Bee, Beyonce, for her opinion.

    The Bee Informed Partnership Report: 

    Nathalie Steinhauer1, Karen Rennich1, Kathleen Lee2, Jeffery Pettis3, David R. Tarpy4, Juliana Rangel5, Dewey Caron6, Ramesh Sagili6, John A. Skinner7, Michael E. Wilson7, James T. Wilkes8, Keith S. Delaplane9, Robyn Rose10, Dennis van Engelsdorp1

    1 Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
    2 Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108
    3 United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, MD
    4 Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC 27695
    5 Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843
    6 Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331
    7 Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996
    8 Department of Computer Science, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608
    9 Department of Entomology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
    10 United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Riverdale, MD 
    Corresponding Author: dvane@umd.edu

    Note: This is a preliminary analysis. Sample sizes and estimates are likely to change. A more detailed final report is being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal at a later date.

  • “Being captured is not just for journalists”: A Hostage Policy Review Reportedly Near Completion

    From left: Diane Foley and Debra Tice talk with Judy Woodruff about new threats to journalism and press freedom during a program at the Newseum on Feb. 4, 2015. (Maria Bryk/Newseum) Diane Foley, Debra Tice & Judy Woodruff

     

    Diane Foley heard about her son’s death last August not from the government but from the Associated Press. Her son, freelance photojournalist James Foley, was the first of two American journalists who were beheaded in 2014 by militants of the Islamic State, or ISIS.

    “I didn’t know that Jim was killed until a hysterical AP reporter called us,” Foley said.

    Foley and Debra Tice, mother of missing freelance journalist Austin Tice, talked about their frustrations dealing with the US government for their sons’ release during a program Feb. 4 at the Newseum on new threats to journalism and press freedom. The program, held in the museum’s Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater, was co-sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists and moderated by Judy Woodruff, co-anchor and managing editor of  PBS NewsHour.

    VIEW EVENT PHOTOS ON FLICKR

    According to CPJ, more than 60 journalists were killed around the world in 2014, and more than 200 are in captivity.

    Before and after the program, press freedom advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders encouraged guests to participate in a #FreeAustinTice blindfold campaign. Tice, a former Marine-turned-freelancer for The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and other news organizations was abducted in Syria in 2012. He was one of the first American correspondents to cover the civil war between the Syrian government and rebels. A video of him bound and blindfolded was released in September 2012. His whereabouts are unknown.

    Debra Tice acknowledged a “good relationship” with the State Department and support from McClatchy “from Day One,” but said the “information vacuum” from the FBI regarding her son’s abduction resulted in an “acrimonious” relationship “in a middle school kind of way.” Tice also cited Syria and the United States’ unwillingness to talk to each other as an obstacle to  hostages’ release.

    “How do you resolve your problems if you’re not speaking?” she said.

    Foley said the government “should be able to engage our enemies.” Her family, she said, negotiated with the terrorists through email. “No one would talk to Jim’s captors. We did not feel Jim was a very high priority,” she said.

    Foley added that the policy of media blackouts about kidnappings, which the government and many news organizations adhere to, is not effective in all situations, including her son’s.

    The American public needs to realize that “being captured is not just for journalists,” she said. “One policy does not fit us all. [The] blackout did not help us.”

    Foley and Tice said they have “invested time” in a hostage policy review that was ordered by President Barack Obama in late 2014 and is being prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center. The new policy would outline how hostage situations are handled in the future.

    “I want to continue Jim’s work,” Foley said. “He would want to right this wrong. Our government can do better. Our press can do better. I hope part of Jim’s legacy can be to stimulate this discussion and to advocate for a clearer policy that will bring our citizens home.”

    In a second discussion that also included Kathleen Carroll, executive editor for the AP, and Douglas Frantz, US secretary of state for public affairs, Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ, described an explosion of journalist hostage taking in recent years that began in 2001 with the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

    “We are dealing with so many families in so many different circumstances grappling with these issues,” he said. “The common experience is just a sense of being completely overwhelmed. There’s a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness.” He said the hostage policy review should “find a way to empower the families, so that they feel some element of control in an environment in which they’ve effectively lost control.”

    Carroll added that the news profession was currently working on ways to help freelancers and the organizations that hire them —”people who are trying to get ahead of the situation enough so there aren’t Foley families and Tice families as often, and hopefully, ever,” she said. “The real question for us as news employers and news consumers is, ‘Is the story worth the risk?’ The answer is sometimes, No.’”

    Frantz said the role of the US government in journalist hostage situations is the same as it is with other American citizens who are endangered overseas, which is to “put all of the resources possible at play to try and get them home safely.”

    Frantz acknowledged that the US government wasn’t prepared for the brutal tactics and frequency of abductions in Syria and agreed with Foley and Tice that the government should do better.

    “This whole government review is addressing those [concerns], and I hope that it fixes them. There’s no panacea here, but the very best minds in the US government are applying themselves here,” he said.

    Update: Families Press for Changes in Policy on Hostages

    – See more at: http://www.newseum.org/2015/02/05/terrorism-and-press-freedom-mothers-journalists-speak-out/#sthash.0soeclnB.dpuf