How to Extract Delicious Fresh Honey from Bee Hive Honey Frames Having bees has obvious rewards and some not so obvious. A clear golden jar of honey just waiting to be spread on some warm homemade bread is an obvious reward for sure. This is the main reason most people get started beekeeping, and makes it all worthwhile. But caring for a miraculously organized group of insects and taking pride in their work is unexpectedly moving. I will show you how easy the honey extraction is. As someone who loves to harvest and collect and create things from the farm, the honey extraction is an extremely rewarding thing.
Tooth decay to be a thing of the past? Enzyme responsible for dental plaque sticking to teeth deciphered The Groningen professors Bauke Dijkstra and Lubbert Dijkhuizen have deciphered the structure and functional mechanism of the glucansucrase enzyme that is responsible for dental plaque sticking to teeth. This knowledge will stimulate the identification of substances that inhibit the enzyme. Just add that substance to toothpaste, or even sweets, and caries will be a thing of the past. The results of the research have been published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The University of Groningen researchers analysed glucansucrase from the lactic acid bacterium Lactobacillus reuteri, which is present in the human mouth and digestive tract. Three dimensional structure Using protein crystallography, the researchers were able to elucidate the three dimensional (3D) structure of the enzyme. Functional mechanism The unravelling of the 3D structure provided the researchers with detailed insight into the functional mechanism of the enzyme. Inhibitors
Minding the Planet: Minding the Planet: From Semantic Web to Glo Draft 1.1 for Review (integrates some fixes from readers) Nova Spivack (www.mindingtheplanet.net) This article presents some thoughts about the future of intelligence on Earth. In particular, I discuss the similarities between the Internet and the brain, and how I believe the emerging Semantic Web will make this similarity even greater. The Semantic Web enables the formal communication of a higher level of language -- metalanguage. The invention of written language long ago changed the economics of communication by making it possible for information to be represented and shared independently of human minds. Semantic metalanguages provide a way to formally express, distribute and share the knowledge necessary to interpret and use information, independently of the human mind. The emergence of standards for sharing semantic metalanguage statements that encode the meaning of information will catalyze a new era of distributed knowledge and intelligence on the Internet.
Russia Warns Obama: Global War Over “Bee Apocalypse” Coming Soon The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three hours to even meet with Kerry, who had traveled to Moscow on a scheduled diplomatic mission, but then relented so as to not cause an even greater rift between these two nations. “It is clear that these chemicals have the potential to affect entire food chains. ABC commissioned world renowned environmental toxicologist Dr. Pierre Mineau to conduct the research. Source
News - Magnetic bacteria may help build future bio-computers 7 May 2012Last updated at 05:40 ET Tiny magnets form inside magnetic bacteria Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said. A team from the UK's University of Leeds and Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron. As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives. The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say. The study appears in the journal Small. As technology progresses and computer components get smaller and smaller, it becomes harder to produce electronics on a nano-scale. So researchers are now turning to nature - and getting microbes involved. Magnetic bacteria In the current study, the scientists used the bacterium Magnetospirilllum magneticum. These naturally magnetic microorganisms usually live in aquatic environments such as ponds and lakes, below the surface where oxygen is scarce.
Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May's Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Editor's note: There are two high school students who have discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster? That was Daniel's question, and he put to the test with a very simple and clever process of immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolating the most productive organisms. The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them.
Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags Follow the honey: Smoking bees makes them less mad when you move them, but leaked EPA documents might have the opposite effect. It’s not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper. All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast. It’s The Agency Who Kicked the Beehive, as written by Jonathan Franzen! Hive talking Wimpy watchdogging
Métamorphoses de l’évolution. Le récit d’une image | L'Atelier d Illustration de couverture de la traduction hollandaise de l'ouvrage de Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin (Honderd jaar na Darwin, 1979). Dans La Vie est belle, le paléontologue Stephen Jay Gould note que “l’iconographie au service de la persuasion frappe (…) au plus profond de notre être”. Pour introduire à une réflexion d’envergure sur l’histoire de la vie, le savant s’en prend à une illustration: la fameuse “marche du progrès”, dont il reproduit plusieurs parodies. La succession des hominidés en file indienne, “représentation archétypale de l’évolution – son image même, immédiatement saisie et instinctivement comprise par tout le monde”, propose une vision faussée d’un processus complexe. Spécialiste de l’usage des modèles évolutionnistes, Gould est conscient que “bon nombre de nos illustrations matérialisent des concepts, tout en prétendant n’être que des descriptions neutres de la nature”. Volumes de la collection Time-Life (en traductions françaises). Peu importent ces nuances.
Einstein was right - honey bee collapse threatens global food security The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia. Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live". Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind. However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa. This is the fastest growing and most valuable part of the global farm economy. China has its own problems. Einstein was not always wrong.