Gobbledygook

At the Smithsonian Youth Culture Fair in Washington, D.C., visitors can see how language and art reflect the changing world of teenagers. My favorite exhibit at the fair features a large wall covered in colorful wooden tiles, each one carved with a slang word. Some of the words include gnarly, slay, delulu, and gobbledygook. Next to each word is the decade when it became popular. This wall shows how slang can change meaning over time and come back in new ways. For example, gnarly first meant something gross, then it meant something really good, and now people use it to describe things that are cool in skating and surfing. The wall is part of the Museum of Contemporary American Teenagers, which is a project by students from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. It helps show how young people shape the words they use to fit who they are.

Along with the wall of slang, the fair also has a display of paintings made by teenagers. These artworks explore what it feels like to grow up in our modern world today. Some paintings show stacks of comic books and computer screens, such as in Asher Coelho’s In My Element, which mixes old and new ways of telling stories. Other pieces, like Bilen Tamirat’s Smile for the Camera, show how hard it can be to look happy on the outside when you feel imperfect inside. Leda Pelton’s What I will pack when I run away from home and Elizabeth Shanefelter’s Falling show feelings of wanting freedom but also being afraid of the unknown. Together, these paintings let visitors see what teenagers care about and how they express themselves through both words and art.

The wall of words and the student art gallery remind us that youth culture is constantly changing but always powerful. By sharing their slang and their artwork, these teens show how their voices, ideas, and creativity shape the world around them. The fair proves that when young people tell their own stories, everyone can see the world in a new way.

Darth Vader

On July 6, I visited Washington, D.C. to explore the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The festival brought together artists, students, and skilled craftspeople from around the country to share their work and tell their stories. People were carving stone, weaving colorful threads, painting murals, or sharing parts of their culture through hands-on exhibits. It was a celebration of both tradition and innovation.

At the event, one of the most impressive areas showcased how artists are helping to restore the Washington National Cathedral from the 2011 earthquake damage. Skilled stone carvers worked carefully to repair damaged pieces and recreate new ones using the same tools and techniques that have been passed down for generations. At the Washington National Cathedral, one of the carved statues is Darth Vader, created after a 1985 children’s “Draw-a-Grotesque” contest. The figure is more than 200 feet off the ground and is part of a collection of about 1,500 grotesques. This is a fascinating example of how new culture elements are included in historical settings.

The festival also included booths that celebrated crafts from different parts of the world. I saw a weaver using a loom to create colorful fabrics in traditional patterns. There were leather ropes and beadwork from ranching traditions, gold-painted ornaments, and intricate hand-carved decorations. One beautiful painting in the exhibit showed a woman surrounded by corn, flowers, and peppers, representing food, nature, and heritage all in one image. Each artwork and object had its own story and history.

All around the festival, people were making things by hand and showing how their work connects to their families, cultures, and communities. The Folklife Festival helped me see how traditions survive when people take the time to share them. Through stone, fabric, paint, and words, the fair showed that creativity is one of the most powerful ways to keep culture alive.

Law Rock

    One of my favorite stops during my trip to Iceland was at Þingvellir, also known as Althing National Park. As we walked through the park, our guide told us about how this was the place where the Vikings held their first parliament over a thousand years ago. The meeting place was called the Althing, and it began around the year 930. Chiefs and their families would travel from all over Iceland to gather here once a year to make laws and settle disputes. It was not a building like we think of today but an open-air meeting place in a valley surrounded by cliffs and streams.

    There is a tall Icelandic flag standing on a rocky ledge called Lögberg, which means “Law Rock.” Our guide explained that this was the spot where the lawspeaker would stand and recite the laws out loud for everyone to hear. It felt amazing to stand there and imagine the crowds of Vikings gathered below, listening carefully as decisions were made that shaped the early history of Iceland.

    During our visit to the park, we also went snorkeling. Þingvellir is famous for the clear, cold water that fills the fissures between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Snorkeling there was incredible. The water was so clear that it felt like floating through glass, and you could see the rocky bottom below. The water was very cold making it inhabitable for fish. The flag at Lögberg and the underwater views made Þingvellir one of the most memorable places of my trip.

Human Influence

When I visited Iceland this summer, I expected to see glaciers, black sand beaches, and volcanoes. What surprised me most was something our tour guide told us as we hiked on Iceland’s glaciers. He explained that a long time ago Iceland was covered in trees, and that it was the Vikings who irrevocably changed the land.

Over a thousand years ago, when the first Norse settlers came around 874 CE, Iceland was full of birch trees and shrubs. Those early Vikings needed wood for almost everything. They used it to build houses, make boats, and stay warm through the long winters. They also cleared land so their animals could graze. Over time, the trees disappeared, and with nothing to hold the soil in place, the strong winds carried much of it away. By the Middle Ages, most of the forests were gone, leaving behind the bare, rugged landscape that people see now.

Now, more than a thousand years later, Iceland is trying to bring its trees back. Across the country there are projects where people are planting birch and other hardy trees in valleys and on hillsides. These trees help keep the soil from blowing away, provide new habitats for birds and other animals, and slowly make the land greener again. Iceland may never look like it did before the Vikings arrived, but these efforts show how people today are trying to care for the land that was changed so long ago. Learning this history made me see the island in a new way.

From Fish to Speech

        Hearing is one of the most important senses humans have. We use it to communicate and understand the world around us through sound. The modern human ear developed from a long evolutionary process that began from a fish.

The earliest version of the ear was not actually used for hearing. In prehistoric fish, it began as an organ that helped them sense movement in water and stay correctly oriented. This organ contained fluid and sensory cells that responded to motion. Over time, some fish developed air sacs that further assisted in detecting underwater vibrations. This was one of the early steps towards hearing.

When animals began moving from water to land, hearing had to change as sound travels differently in air than it does water. Amphibians used vibrations from the ground, while reptiles developed a more advanced middle ear. One important bone, called the columella, helped transmit sound and later became the stapes in human ears.

Mammals made hearing even more advanced as they developed three more middle ear bones: the malleus, incus, and stapes. These bones help transfer sound energy into the inner ear more efficiently. Mammals also developed a coiled cochlea, which made certain frequencies to be processed more precisely. Thus, making hearing useful for locating sound and recognizing patterns.

In humans, hearing became deeply intertwined with communications. The ear allowed early humans to listen, respond to sounds, and eventually develop languages. Hearing is part of a larger system involving speech, emotion and social connection. This is the reason why hearing is so important when learning new languages.

The most interesting part of our ears is how they still carry traces of its evolutionary past. Structures that once helped fish sense movement and survive underwater were slowly reshaped into the organs humans now use to hear speech and emotion. The ear demonstrates how evolution often transforms old parts for new purposes. From detecting vibrations in water to understanding language, the human ear is a reminder that our basic senses have deep evolutionary history.

We are all EARS….

Our ears enable us to hear sound and maintain balance.  They are located over the temporal lobe.  The ear lobes are easily visible, but that’s only a small part of this important organ which is essential for hearing and balance.  There are three main parts to our ear: outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear.  The eardrum (tympanic membrane) separates the outer and middle ear.  

The outer ear is easily visible on the side of the head.  The earlobe is called the pinna.  The external ear canal connects the outside world to the tympanic membrane.  The outer part of the external auditory canal is made of cartilage while the inner two-thirds is made of bone.  Its main function is to transmit sound waves from the surrounding environment to the tympanic membrane.  The fine hairs lining the canal secrets earwax and prevents foreign objects from entering.

The tympanic membrane separates the outer ear from the middle ear and vibrates when sound waves enter the ear canal.  The membrane is divided into a flaccid part (pars flaccida) and a tense part (pars tensa).  It also has a lateral side and a medial side.  The lateral side faces the outer ear while the medial side faces the middle ear.  Part of the facial nerve (CN VII) passes through the membrane. 

The middle ear is located in the temporal bone and consists of three tiny bones called ossicles: malleus (hammer), incus (anvil), and stapes (stirrup).  The handle of the malleus is attached to the tympanic membrane while its head is attached to the body of the incus. The incus is also attached to the head of the stapes.  Finally, the footplate of the stairs is in contact with the oval window.  These ossicles transfer sound vibration from the tympanic membrane to the inner ear.  

In addition, the eustachian tube connects the middle ear with the nasopharynx and helps to equalize air pressure on both sides of the tympanic membrane. The tube is closed at rest but opens with swallowing or yawning so pressure differences can equalize. Thus, when we fly or drive up into the mountains, chewing gum can help to equalize pressure in the middle ear and outer ear.

The inner ear has an outer bony labyrinth and an inner membranous labyrinth. The vestibule is a central bony cavity that connects with the cochlea anteriorly and semicircular canals posteriorly.   

Cochlear:  The cochlear transforms sound waves into electric signals for the vestibulocochlear nerve.  Stapes, one of the middle ear bones, vibrates when sound is transmitted.  The stapes is in contact with the oval window and transmits vibration of sound waves to the cochlear fluid.  The hair cells in the cochlear duct detect the sound vibration and convert it into an electric signal.  The cochlear duct (scala media) is filled with endolymph.  There are also two chambers called scala vestibuli and scala tympani filled with perilymph.  The cochlear duct is positioned between the scala vestibuli and scala tympani.  

Vestibular system (vestibule and semicircular canals):  This system is responsible for balance. There are 3 fluid filled semicircular canals oriented at 90 degrees from each other and help to control balance.  The canals are lined by hair cells which can sense body movement and position.  There are three semicircular canals: anterior, posterior, and lateral.  When the head moves, the fluid and hairs also move.  This movement is converted to an electric signal along the vestibular nerve.  The brain processes this information and then sends signals to muscles to help the body maintain balance.

Variations in the Maxillary Sinus

This paper explores variation in maxillary sinus (MS) anatomy between individuals of East Asian, European, and African ancestry, and how these differences may contribute to health disparities in chronic sinusitis. The MS drains mucus through a small opening called the maxillary sinus ostium (MSO), which is located high on the sinus wall. This positioning makes drainage heavily reliant on mucociliary action, rather than gravity. If mucus can’t drain efficiently, it builds up and can lead to infection. The study used 3D CT scans of 167 adult skulls to measure MS and nasal fontanelle (NF) shape and size, especially the vertical distance from the sinus floor to the MSO.

The results showed that East Asian individuals tend to have significantly taller and larger MSs, with the MS floor positioned farther below the MSO. This increased vertical distance means that mucus has to travel farther to be cleared, possibly increasing the risk of chronic sinusitis. In contrast, individuals of European and African ancestry had shorter MSs and shorter distances between the MS floor and MSO, which may allow for more efficient drainage. Despite these differences, the NF—which is used as a bony landmark for the MSO—was similarly sized and positioned across all ancestry groups, suggesting that surgical approaches to sinus treatment can be standardized.

Importantly, the study emphasizes that these anatomical features do not directly cause disease based on ancestry. Rather, individuals with taller MSs—regardless of ancestry—may be more susceptible to sinus infections. The findings help explain why nonallergic (noneosinophilic) sinusitis is more common in East Asian populations and suggest that internal anatomy, along with socioeconomic and environmental factors, contributes to global health disparities.

The authors conclude that anatomical variation, especially MS height, may play a role in sinusitis risk and should be considered in both clinical treatment and future research. This paper highlights the need to study not just pathology or healthcare access, but also how normal anatomical differences between populations might shape disease vulnerability.

This is the paper I read:

https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.24644