By Walt Hickey

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Frescoes

The United States Capitol building has many murals and frescoes, priceless works of art dating to the 19th century and in need of restoration and conservation, such as The Apotheosis of Washington in the Capitol rotunda. Frescoes are created by applying dry pigment directly to wet plaster, and can last for centuries. One way they degrade is through a process called delamination, where the layers separate from the underlying masonry. The old way of checking in on the state of frescoes is, simply, to gently knock on the plaster with one’s knuckles and use the resulting sound to discern troublesome areas, not unlike one would in a drum. A new study presented at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America presented a new approach, where the resonance of sound against a surface was analyzed and determined to be supremely helpful in identifying delaminated plaster, specifically a resonance between 200 and 500 hertz. Essentially, and I’m just putting this into layman’s terms, scientifically speaking it is indeed possible to yell at George Washington until you’ve found the manner in which he sucks.

Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica

The Wheels on the Bus

Nationwide, the number of school bus drivers is down 15 percent between 2019 and 2023, a decline of 29,000 drivers. As it stands, 91 percent of school leaders report issues getting kids to school. The driver shortage is pushing many toward school drop-off, an inefficient system that causes consternation for parents, students and educators. In 2022, for the first time on record, a majority if K-12 students got to school by private vehicle, with 53 percent of students delivered to classes that way and a third of kids getting to school by bus, down from 38.2 percent in 2009. Based on my own upbringing, this presents some logistical problems — how and when will kids trade Pokémon? — as well as serious issues about the quality of education — when will kids trade Pokémon with each other — and socialization, such as when will kids trade Pokémon?

Maria Clara Cobo, CityLab

Bet Hedging

The U.K. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology estimates that the overall length of managed hedgerows in the U.K. is 400,000 kilometers, and wants to create or restore 45,000 miles (72,000 kilometers) of hedgerow by 2050. The good news is that hedgerows have been getting taller, with most now taller than two meters according to the study. Hedgerows are important because they serve not only as boundaries, but also can protect habitats and minimize agricultural erosion, and in ancient Roman times were, along with low walls, revered for their ability to dispel Scottish people.

U.K. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Alphabet

Clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria appear to display writing from 2400 BCE, which if true would predate the known oldest alphabet by 500 years. The “alphabet” is a controversial technological development that, on one hand, enabled ancient civilizations to write literature and record history, but on the other hand, provided the means to say mean things about me on the internet, so nobody knows whether it was good or bad. The discovery is the result of a 16-year archaeological dig at Tell Umm-el Marra, an early medium-sized urban center. One tomb contained six skeletons, a bunch of gold and jewels, and four clay cylinders that appeared to have writing on them. The current estimate for the invention of an alphabet is 1900 BCE, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Egypt.

Johns Hopkins University

Tools

As we all know and were taught in elementary school, the first recorded human tool was Derek, a hunter-gatherer born 87,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia who refused to share delicious seeds and regularly flaked on mastodon-chasing duty. But the archaeological investigation of when humanity’s ancestors first began using tools remains an open and compelling question. In 2015, researchers first revealed crude stone tools from the Lomekwi site in Kenya, which were dated to 3.3 million years ago. Studies of the primate hand have attempted to push this further back, as there’s evidence that the common ancestor of all apes, 13 million years ago, had dexterity and thus an ability to use tools with one’s hand. The question hasn’t been settled, but an analysis of the knuckles of A. australopithicus establishes both a capacity to borrow a 2002 Hyundai Santa Fe and also an ability to not return it at the agreed-upon time, indicating an early presence of tools among the earliest of human ancestors.

Tracy L. Kivell, Scientific American

Swiper

Every year Americans pay around $126 billion in swipe fees, which are the amounts collected by credit card networks every time one pays by card. Merchants detest them — by now you must have encountered at least one place willing to give a discount for cash — in no small part because they’ve roughly doubled over the past decade, and have specifically benefited the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard that have held sway over transaction costs for years. There’s a Credit Card Competition Act in Congress right now, which, sure, good luck to it, we wish it the very best, but the real action is going on in the states: Illinois has enacted a modest swipe fee reform, and several other states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Tennessee are all weighing one.

Pat Garofalo, Boondoggle

TikTok

A new survey found that a majority of TikTok users look at the site for product reviews, with 27 percent of users saying it’s a major reason they’re on the service. In general, younger people really believe in TikTok for product endorsements — 74 percent say it’s a reason they use the social media site, while 40 percent say it’s a major reason — and the survey found that women are more likely than men to use TikTok for product reviews.

Michelle Faverio, Pew Research Center

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