An unusual moment

We all know the Law of the Jungle is not a pretty situation for any animal not fortunate enough to be at the top of the food chain.

It's also true that Nature finds a way to surprise us.

Take a look at these extraordinary photos of a leopard taking on an African crocodile. This is rare and unusual.

I'm back in in the province of Alberta for a few days and it's interesting to see how weather patterns appear to be similar to Southern Ontario this summer.

Everything looks green from the air, indicating crops and fields have good moisture. High, thick clouds gather in the afternoon and bring summer showers . I assume they're welcomed by most farmers and gardeners. Toronto has had the wettest June and July on record and continues to get an afternoon or evening drenching just about every day.

Of course we wonder if this is a new phase in the global warming trend, but we won't know for a few years until a trend is established. Last year, it was hot and dry in Southern Ontario. This year seems the opposite.

Just as the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of no real growth in the economy, we can't be sure whether this year's weather is truly related to climate change.
We'll ask the meteorologists when they're finished analyzing the data.

Meantime, we can carry sunscreen with an umbrella on the side.

Vertical farms

My mother lives in a downtown apartment building. She grew up on a farm and sometimes misses the country. She loves to grow things.

On the roof of her building she found some planter boxes and planted herbs in them. She waters them. When she needs some herbs for cooking, she enters the elevator, travels to the top of the building, cuts what she needs and returns to her kitchen.

Well, it turns out that similar ideas have occurred to a professor at Columbia University in New York. He dreamed big and sparked the imagination of architects.

Together they're proposing "vertical farms," tall buildings devoted to growing food for thousands of people in the city.

Check out the slide show as well.

Have a good weekend!

Are traffic signals driving you crazy?

One of my complaints about life in the suburbs relates to street signage and traffic signals.

It seems every time a new subdivision is built, authorities feel they must introduce traffic lights to every new street that connects to a major artery. Sometimes, traffic signals are literally 50 metres apart and the result is dramatically slower traffic flow and congestion. The constant stopping and starting is not too good for vehicle engines or the environment either.

What further bothers me is that these lights seem to have very little variation in their timing mechanism, meaning that on a Sunday morning or in the overnight period some of these lights still operate in a sequence similar to that of the peak of rush hour; so one could be sitting there at a red light at 2 AM all alone, no other vehicle or pedestrian around, waiting for it to turn green.

For me, this is poor traffic management.

The same can be said for four-way stop signs at certain intersections where the signs seem to have only one function: slow traffic. Why can't we have a simple traffic circle or more yield signs?

In many areas of our cities traffic signals, speed limit signs and other roadway signage appear to have no correlation to the road conditions or to the driving environment. They can be downright confusing. What's even more bothersome is that police officers seem to relish enforcing rules that sometimes frankly don't make any sense and that catch many drivers unaware.

Recently, writer John Staddon wrote a piece in The Atlantic magazine that makes the argument that stop signs and speed limits actually endanger Americans. He says they are inducing a form of blindness in drivers caused by lack of attention to the roadway itself.

The article was entitled "Distracting Miss Daisy," and I agree with its premise.

Exploring Gdansk

Have you ever wanted to see Poland?

Matt Gross of the New York Times is in Gdansk and has posted his article and video of the city that spawned the Solidarity movement in the 1980s.

Readers of Gross's blog voted for him to visit Gdansk as part of his grand summer tour of Europe.

We've been following the "Frugal Traveler" trip, as you've probably seen in recent weekly posts.

Explore the port city here.

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Photo of the medieval town hall by Kriss Szkurlatowski. Many thanks.

Tomorrow's MDs are stepping out of the lab to sharpen their powers of observation.

We could file this item under the category of "learning-the-old-fashioned way".

American medical students, perhaps growing too dependent on technology, are learning how to increase their natural powers of observation by doing something very simple: visiting art museums.

The Boston Globe reports that the prestigious Harvard Medical School has started a trend across the United States, and now other universities are also offering art classes to medical students.

It all began with Dr. Joel Katz, who five years ago decided to break with scientific tradition and take his medical students to the Museum of Fine Arts once a week. He arranged for art instructors to question students, challenging them to deeply observe works of art and explain what they saw.

At a time when doctors are relying more and more on CT scans, biopsies and blood analysis, he notices that students are not making the most of basic observational skills that could help them make better diagnostic judgments.

Dr. Katz's colleagues were skeptical when he first tried this approach.

But now, Dr. Katz and his team have published a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that shows students' ability to make accurate observations after taking art classes can improve by as much as 38 per cent. The Globe writes:
"When shown artwork and photos of patients, students were more likely to notice features such as a patient's eyes being asymmetrical or a tiny, healed sore on an index finger."

"We're trying to train students to not make assumptions about what they're going to see, but to do deep looking. Our hope is that they will be able to do this when they look at patients," Dr. Katz says.

You can read the article by Liz Kowalczyk here.

Additional details are available from the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

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Photo of Gallery C in Hermosa Beach, California, courtesy of C. Toepfer, who made it available for public use.

This day in history...

On this day in history, Wiley Post, flying a plane he called the "Winnie Mae," became the fist person in history to fly solo around the world. The date was July 22nd, 1933.

(I'm away on a work-related assignment...back soon.)

Baggage conundrum

As we've heard in the news lately, airlines are facing a financial crisis due to the rising cost of fuel. In North America, air carriers are passing along additional costs to passengers, and this is making air travel increasingly frustrating.

In many cases, companies are limiting checked baggage to one item and are charging extra for a second piece of checked luggage. Consequently, passengers are packing more into larger carry-on bags. This contributes to the hypocrisy of cabin regulations.

Why, for example, do airlines insist on telling passengers to put heavier, larger items under the seat in front of them, when everyone who's ever been in an airplane can see that passengers prefer to place the heavier carry-on bags in the compartments above? While everyone understands the danger of items falling from overhead compartments, no one wants to sit for hours without a place to put their feet. Boarding has now become a rush to find available overhead space for larger carry-on items.

As cabins become more crowded with baggage because of the limits on checked luggage, the situation is only going to get worse. Airlines should recognize this reality and think creatively instead of repeating rules that everybody ignores.