Northern Stargazer - Cassie Kinoshi

In the U.S., 95 million vaccine doses have been administered. The CDC put out guidelines for people who are fully vaccinated.

Science Friday

What's Next For The Fully Vaccinated?

For more than a century, changes in temperature and aridity have impacted the hues of nature.

Flower Colors Are Changing With The Climate

Semblance Of Reality

A gentle waltz for strings and piano with a swing improvised heart

Liaisons Dangereuses

Sub-Saharan Africa is on the front lines of climate change with extreme weather wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agricultural production. COVID-19 introduces yet another level of risk to the food chain. In this podcast, IMF economists Pritha Mitra and Seung Mo Choi say the increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters is weighing down on the region, which relies heavily on rainfed agriculture. The latest  looks at how the region can better manage the types of shocks that threaten its food supply.

Safeguarding Food Security in sub-Saharan Africa

Astronauts just bioengineered human cells on the International Space Station.

How Zero Gravity Can Reveal Basic Biological Questions

Indigenous peoples burned their land for thousands of years to prevent much larger fires. Why it might be an important part of future wildfire prevention.

How Indigenous Burning Practices Could Prevent Massive Wildfires

What a strange, odd, mixed-up year it has been.  The yellow spanner of Covid-19 really wrecked a lot of plans. I was all booked to travel to Estonia to record, but it had to be cancelled.   Very noticeable was the sunlight, perhaps it was because there was few jet trails, but when the day was cloudless the sunlight could be absolutely dazzling, it had the strange effect of making it feel like we were living in paradise.     Because of the restrictions I am so glad the woods is only within a moderate cycle distance from my home.  I am very fortunate that I have two fairly good places to record relatively close by.  I even found a wild sand dune area not even five kilometers away,  I hope to record more there in the future.   Disc 1 track 2 is from a much longer recording, it is probably one of the best recordings made during the 2020 season, I had made a few recordings, near the stream, then a bit less close, then a bit further away and another even further away, as I wanted a sound where the stream was a suggestion rather than really dominating the sound picture.  The Blue Tits nested in a cavity block in the wall of my home, there is an vent on the inside of the block, so I only needed to place the microphone up to that to get a fantastic close perspective recording.  
I include two recordings of the Blue tits as they sounded so different when I recorded them a week later.  Sometimes I would get great results by leaving the old Marantz recorder hidden in a bushy place while I go not too far away to record with the new recorder, I love how I had no idea of what it has captured for me, only later when the track loaded on the computer did I get to see if it captured anything worthwhile.  This was the case with Blackbird - alarm calls (Track 3 on disc 2).  I think the peaks came in at about minus six db.  This year was my first time to use Contact microphones and a Hydrophone.    
At the beginning of April my dad Desmond died, he was 89, a great age.  Apart from Covid, we could see he wasn’t going to live much longer, he had been deteriorating noticeably for months up to that.  Why then are the covers for the two discs so strange ?  
A birdsong production should have birds on it !   My dad was big into sun power and indeed wind power even long before it became popular.  Over by my workshop he had placed a few sun power panels on the wall, these were wired into a small room to a panel on the wall with six switches.  I thought it a good way to remember him by including a picture of part of his panel for disc one front cover.  I was going to include the six switches in the picture, but my heart of hearts said no, it didn’t look good, too much scruffy brown, but I include it in the zipped folder (If you are buying it on Bandcamp)so you can see what I am talking about.  I had almost chosen it, as it occurred to me one morning that the six switches are like the levels of lockdown (I hate that term, but I have to use it here) thankfully we didn’t have a level six, maybe that is like in a movie I saw where the authorities came and boarded up a house with the people still inside.  In the end I used the part of the photo with the meter.   
The butterflies . . . Dessie we call him, was always interested in butterflies, that is where I got my interest in nature, as a child he used to bring us for walks up along the canal to see the wild flowers and butterflies.  The picture comes from one drawer of his small collection of Irish butterflies he put together maybe around the late 1940’s or 1950’s ??  Very few of them are even in one piece now, this drawer just looked the part, it was all mixed up and spoiled like the year had been, the summer we never really had, at least not the way we wanted or had planned it.

A Strange Year - Disc One - (Album Sample)

《手懐けられない光》オーケストラのための

ライヴ・レコーディング : 2020年8月29日、"第30回　芥川也寸志サントリー作曲賞選考演奏会"、サントリーホール（大ホール）にて
演奏 : 沼尻竜典、新日本フィルハーモニー交響楽団
©︎（公財）サントリー芸術財団サントリーホール

Live recording : 29 (Sat) Aug, "The 30th Competition of Yasushi Akutagawa Suntory Award for Music Composition", Main hall in the Suntory Hall
Performance : Ryusuke Numajiri, New Japan Philharmonic
©︎Suntory fondaton for the ARTS, Suntory Hall

« Lumière indomptable » I for orchestra (2020)

Terror groups and separatists run riot in the sprawling region, and France has had <a href="https://espresso.economist.com/9f5a14374960400c7f537198d1e26acd?utm_campaign=the-intelligence&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=third-party-host&amp;utm_content=show-notes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some success</a> in keeping the peace. But how, and when, to draw down its troops? Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Trade Organisation’s history-making new leader, has <a href="https://espresso.economist.com/81517079882bbb04ab3b2c1fb244f336?utm_campaign=the-intelligence&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=third-party-host&amp;utm_content=show-notes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">quite the task</a> ahead to rebuild trust in and among the institution’s members. And the <a href="https://espresso.economist.com/4f4c7d3dd85ea84eb208d7cd031dbfe7?utm_campaign=the-intelligence&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_source=third-party-host&amp;utm_content=show-notes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">worrying shifts</a> in subsea soundscapes.&nbsp;Additional audio courtesy Jana Winderen. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here <a href="http://www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer</a> &#10;&nbsp; <hr>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.

Desert stands: France in the Sahel

Science, technology, and other cool stuff from public radio's Science Friday. It's brain fun, for curious people. From WNYC Studios.

How Indigenous Burning Practices Could Prevent Massive Wildfires

SciFri