All posts by She Seeks Serene

My Journey of Reimagining Life, Love and Education

Profiles: 66-Year Old American Painter Peggy Cyphers – “Luminosity”

Peggy Cyphers - Luminescent Waterfall 2018 mixed media on canvasPeggy Cyphers has a persistent vision of nature that she translates into richly colored and textured quasi-abstract paintings. She pours and lightly brushes countless layers of paint and sand onto the canvas until she achieves luminous and sumptuous surface. Approaching each canvas as a kind of garden where organic and geometric elements intermingle with intense light, she nurtures elaborate hybrid forms. David Ebony, ArtNet Magazine

Peggy Cyphers (born 1954) is an American painter, printmaker, professor and art writer, who has shown her work in the U.S. and internationally since 1984. Since Cyphers’ move to New York City over 30 years ago, her inventive and combinatory approaches to the materials of paint, silkscreen and sand have developed into canvases that explore the “Politics of Progress” as it impacts culture and the natural world.

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Art & Landscape: Gardens & Grounds Of The Natural History Museum, London”

The Museum’s gardens were originally set aside for future expansion of the building, but when money ran out they became an outside space for the public. They haven’t just been for show – over the years they’ve been a burial ground for whales, they’ve hosted a secret war bunker, and they’ve been converted to a farm complete with eight Sussex pigs.

The Natural History Museum in London is home to over 80 million specimens, including meteorites, dinosaur bones and a giant squid.

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Diet Infographic: Most “Macronutrient Diets” Reduce Weight & Blood Pressure In 6 Months (BMJ)

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From a BMJ Study article (April, 2020):

Compared with usual diet, moderate certainty evidence supports modest weight loss and substantial reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure for low carbohydrate (eg, Atkins, Zone), low fat (eg, Ornish), and moderate macronutrient (eg, DASH, Mediterranean) diets at six but not 12 months. Differences between diets are, however, generally trivial to small, implying that people can choose the diet they prefer from among many of the available diets (fig 6) without concern about the magnitude of benefits.

Introduction

The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2018.1 In response, authorities have made dietary recommendations for weight management and cardiovascular risk reduction.23 Diet programmes—some focusing on carbohydrate reduction and others on fat reduction—have been promoted widely by the media and have generated intense debates about their relative merit. Millions of people are trying to lose weight by changing their diet. Thus establishing the effect of dietary macronutrient patterns (carbohydrate reduction v fat reduction v moderate macronutrients) and popular named dietary programmes is important.

Biological and physiological mechanisms have been proposed to explain why some dietary macronutrient patterns and popular dietary programmes should be better than others. A previous network meta-analysis, however, suggested that differences in weight loss between dietary patterns and individual popular named dietary programmes are small and unlikely to be important.4 No systematic review and network meta-analysis has examined the comparative effectiveness of popular dietary programmes for reducing risk factors for cardiovascular disease, an area of continuing controversy.

Read entire study

New Medical Podcasts: E-Cigarette Deaths, Heart Disease And 10-Weeks To Crush The Curve (NEJM)

New England Journal of Medicine Podcast This WeekFeaturing articles on deaths due to e-cigarette– or vaping-associated lung injury, apixaban for venous thromboembolism in cancer, the management of coronary disease in patients with advanced kidney disease, health-status outcomes in the ISCHEMIA-CKD trial,  and ten weeks to crush the curve. 

Additionally, renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system inhibitors in patients with Covid-19, and teasing the immune system to repair the heart; a review article on the care of patients with diabetic retinopathy; a case report of a man with high blood pressure, renal insufficiency, and hematuria; and Perspective articles on clinical and social risk adjustment, on prediction models, and on medical care during the pandemic.

Wildlife: “Hummingbirds Don’t Like Flying In Rainy Conditions” (Smithsonian)

No bird is more skilled at in-flight feeding than a hummingbird, thanks to their ability to hover in the air. But if it’s rainy, these fantastic flyers have to be extremely careful not to get hurt.

From the Series: Into the Wild Colombia: A Hummingbird’s Quest http://bit.ly/2Pvi9Fh

Coronavirus: “The Patients Left Behind” (Prognosis Podcast)

Prognosis PodcastDoctors are delaying procedures and surgeries in order to save resources like hospital beds and ventilators for Covid-19 patients, and prevent the infection from spreading.

Emma Court reports on the difficult choices doctors are forced to make, and the danger that we’re creating another health care crisis.

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Art History: “Travels With A Curator – Ca’ d’Oro Museum In Venice” (Video)

In the first episode of “Travels with a Curator,” Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, transports us to Venice. He introduces us to the Ca’ d’Oro, a house museum which was lovingly restored around the same time that the Frick mansion was built in New York City.

The Frick Collection Logo
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Travel & Nature Videos: “Built From Within” In Wyoming Featuring Ansel Adams By Janssen Powers

Filmed, Edited and Directed by: Janssen Powers

Narration by: Ansel Adams
Sound Design/ Mix by: Steve Horne
Score by: Janssen Powers & Harrison Allen

My wife and I disappeared into the Rocky Mountains for a week last summer on a mission to complete the Teton Crest Trail. We decided to bring my 16mm camera along to document the 40-mile trek, figuring that the footage would last a lot longer than any bruises made by our heavy packs.

In hindsight, now going on six-weeks cooped up inside a NYC apartment, deciding to shoot this trip feels like one of the best decisions we’ve made. Like many of us in these uncertain times, I’ve been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately, but this footage has given me an escape.

Here’s to hoping that someone else can find some solace in it as well. Happy Earth Day.

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News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious