After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phon, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee.
Because of this the amount of nectar produced in the hive also shrank. Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima Kumar, the authors of the report in the journal Current Science, wrote:
Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese super-strong mortar made from sticky rice, the delicious oesweet rice that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes.
or complex carbohydrate, found in rice and other starchy foods, as the oesecret ingredient that appears to be responsible for the mortars legendary strength. oeanalytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material,
#Bees Prefer Flowers with Caffeine Bees prefer certain kinds of nectar. Also nicotine! A study conducted at the University of Haifa revealed that bees prefer nectar containing those psychoactive substances.
Flower nectar is comprised primarily of sugars, which provide energy for the potential pollinators. But the floral nectar of some plant species also includes small quantities of substances known to be toxic,
such as caffeine and nicotine Caffeine is found at concentration levels of 11-17.5 milligrams per liter, mostly in citrus flowers.
In the nectar of grapefruit flowers, however, caffeine is present in much higher concentrations, reaching 94.2 milligrams per liter The results showed that bees clearly prefer nectar containing nicotine and caffeine over the oeclean nectar.
The preferred nicotine concentration was 1 milligram per liter similar to that found in nature. Given a choice of higher levels of nicotine versus oeclean nectar,
the bees preferred the latter. The presumption is that natural selection has favored those plants that satisfy the desires of their pollinators.
Further studies are underway to ascertain whether the bees are addicted to caffeine and nicotine. Link.
#The Moonshine Revolution Why White Whiskey is Making a Comeback Moonshine still circa 1930s oethey call it that old mountain dew,
Yes, the distilled spirit known as moonshine, white lightning, white dog or simply white whiskey is the liquor of the moment, bringing together whiskey geeks, home distillers and high-end mixologists, all of
whom find in the formerly clandestine rotgut a new means of expression, both for their palates and their politics.
Why is moonshine making a comeback? For the same reason absinthe did a few years ago.
Because its delicious. Because its illegal. And because its cool. Moonshine, both then and now, is whiskey as it comes out of the still:
no oak barrels, no caramel color, no aging. Its just straight liquor from fermented corn or wheat mash.
None of the luxury-tinged language that surrounds its grown-up siblings, like bourbon or scotch, applies to the dog.
There are no 12 years of oemellowing, no oecomplex vanilla notes. If you get one flavor out of a white whiskey,
youre doing well. Historically, youre doing well if you dont die or go blind after drinking it;
the standards of moonshine manufacture, from George washingtons time forward, have not been especially high. The Washington reference, by the way, isnt a random one:
in his second term as President, a major rebellion based on untaxed moonshine tested the new nations mettle.
Washington fought the bootleggers back into their hills and holes, where they have remained ever since, but whiskey has been a political statement throughout the history of the Republic.
In rural areas, it was the one cash commodity that could be made of crops; in urban ones, it was a way to thwart the will of puritanical elites.
Although illegal in all 50 states, theres a burgeoning culture of home distillers who revel in taking a bowl of corn mush and turning it, through a Rube Goldberg contraption of their making,
Jonathan Forester, a distiller and spirits consultant in upstate New york, reckons that there are up to 200,000 home distillers brewing away in the U s.
Some of what the moonshine geeks make at home is very fine indeed, even when compared to cask-aged bourbon
and other aged brown spirits. oewe judged 65 different small-batch liquors in multiple categories,
with few getting a score of over 70 out of 100, says Forester. oeacross the board,
the artisanal moonshines were getting 80s and 90s. Because the flavor of the liquor is obstructed not by that of charred oak barrels,
tasters can get a sense of such elemental whiskeymaking processes as the quality and mix of the grains and the basic technique (ranging from murderous to masterful) of the distiller.
Commercial distilleries for their part, arent asking any questions. Its a hell of a lot cheaper to sell unaged whiskey than it is to painstakingly cask-age it for years at a time.
As a result, theres been a gold rush of brands: Kentuckys Buffalo Trace (one of the oldest and most admired distillers in the U s.)makes White Dog,
Wisconsins Deaths Door Spirits has White Whisky and even New yorks tiny Finger Lakes Distilling sells Glen Thunder,
named after the Watkins Glen racetrack. I had a flight of all three at Tipsy Parson, in New york city,
and expected them to be uniformly vile. Im no enthusiast of this sort of thing, and even the most acclaimed
and expensive grappa tends to make me cough and gag. But there was no question that the three products all tasted different
theyre neither blankly insipid, like vodka, nor gasoline-y, the way so many clear spirits are.
The critical raves white whiskey gets seem bizarre to traditionalists. How can the raw material for their beloved bourbon get higher scores than the bourbon itself?
Its like a tub of cookie dough winning the Pillsbury Bake-Off. oeim not convinced its a long-term positive trend,
says cocktail guru Dave Wondrich, author of the mixological history Imbibe! oebasically, its a way of cheapening spirits by skipping the aging of whiskey.
The best way to drink whiskey is unaged not like that. Its a similar experience to what classically trained chefs are facing these days,
as they watch noodle bars and taco trucks make the pages of Food & Wine.
And its the same refrain you hear from journalists who decry the way many bloggers bypass the rigorous fact-checking
and editing that they always believed was necessary. For that matter, its the same plaint made by politicians
and legislators and civic professionals who wish they could be allowed to run complex systems the way they were trained to,
The moonshine revolution, in other words, is utterly of a piece with the libertarian mood of the times;
Its not as if traditional American brown spirits are being neglected; bourbon, the most famous controlled-appellation U s. product in the world, accounts for nearly $1 billion in global exports,
and appreciation for the stuff is growing all the time, as bars and restaurants strive to outdo one another in the number and obscurity of their bourbon brands.
But like so much else in American culture these days, Elijah Craig, Pappy Van Winkle, George T. Stagg and their brethren have a new generation of rivals,
and make breakfast at the Genius Bar, would I be sued? Is that fair use? Apple also trademarked the new idisk icon,
#How To Make Breast Milk Cheese At home Step one. Obtain human breast milk. Yes, you read that right.
Chef Daniel Angerer has come up with a recipe for you to turn that liquid gold into something yummy you can spread on a cracker
If you dare to try it yourself he lists a step by step guide to making the cheese on his website.
and human milk to make the cheese so you will only have to give up 2 cups of the good stuff for the recipe.
Cottages and Bars Mushroom hotel room Albanias Enver Hoxha ruled from 1945 to 1985 and towards the end made North koreas Kim Jong-il look normal.
some have been turned into restaurants, used for making wine, and even a sustainable eco-resort. Mushroom bunker turned into a restaurant
and bar There is even a nonprofit organization dedicated to their preservation and adaptation: The purpose of Concrete Mushrooms is to understand
and develop the bunkers as assets for Albania. The founding principles of the project are:
1. A critical approach to these bunkers as symbols of xenophobia in order to invert their meaning and change then into symbols of hospitality. 2. The preservation of the bunkers in terms of their link to the memory of an important period of the Albanian history
And you can buy 1, 000 at most dollar stores for pennies, even the large ones. 1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave.
and chrome Coffee filters are lint-free so theyll leave windows sparkling. 3. Protect China by separating your good dishes with a coffee filter between each dish. 4. Filter broken cork from wine.
when opening a wine bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter. 5. Protect a cast-iron skillet.
strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter. 8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale. 9. Hold tacos.
Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods. 10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot.
Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes. 11.
Prevent a Popsicle from dripping. Poke one or two holes as needed in a coffee filter. 12.
Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries, chicken fingers, etc on them.
and to tie fresh herbs in to put in soups and stews. 18. Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling
Insurance for cattle, chickens, tractors, trucks and lives is suddenly appearing in Indias vast rural areas
an important new indicator of the spread of middle-class stability in this nation of 1. 2 billion people.
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water. oeit is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have seen ever,
the opposite direction, said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food safety in Washington.
they use cow dung cakes as fuel for cooking. One of their principle tenets oeamar Rakhave That means to provide shelter for abandoned animals
and are known to be violent in course of its protection. There is a saying that if you are a hunter,
but your salad fixings may already contain some natural insect repellents. Home improvement blog Apartment Therapy suggests using cucumbers to keep ants away,
and offered vodka-based insect repellent, but what about the ants finding refuge from the summer heat in your home?
As summer approaches, ants flock to kitchens on the hunt for food crumbs. Ants are appalled by cucumbers;
#Monsanto Takes Fight To Control Your Food To Supreme court The battle over the non-regulated status of genetically modified crops has reached the US Supreme court. Monsanto has appealed,
not surprisingly a lower court decision that halted the continued unregulated release and planting of the agrifood giants Roundup Ready Alfalfa.
Background and implications of the case, after the jump In 2004 Monsanto and their partner Forage Genetics petitioned the USDA for the go-ahead to commercially release Roundup Ready alfalfa.
Geertson Seed Farms opposes the commercialization of Roundup Ready alfalfa because the USDA failed to properly consider the environmental impacts and associated economic effects of commercialization.
The deregulation and commercialization of Roundup Ready alfalfa poses significant problems that must be considered and resolved in particular concerning biological contamination and weed resistance development.
when the court delivers its ruling that Monsanto will be back in the genetically modified alfalfa business.
More on Monsanto at Treehugger. comstudy Finds Monsantos GMO Corn Causes Organ Damage in Rodentsthe Fight Over the Future of Food:
and How to Feed the Worldmonsanto oeseedless Corn Sold To South african Farmersgermany Bans Planting of Monsanto GM Cornout, Monsanto!
and Michael Pollan Talk about Creating a World That Can Feed Itself
#Unexpected Inventions from Unexpected People There are some inventions and inventors you just grow up knowing about Alexander graham bell and the telephone,
the ex-Prime minister Margaret Thatcher helped invent soft serve ice cream. Im not sure if I should be thankful or not.
a British restaurant and food manufacturing company. The team she worked on developed a way to whip air into ice cream
leaving it lighter and creamier than existing ice cream. The result? Soft serve. Yum. Henry David Thoreau, of all people, invented raisin bread when he tossed a handful into the dough he was baking while at Walden Pond.
It doesnt sound like a big deal, but the addition of the shriveled little grapes is said to have stunned just
and scandalized the housewives of Concord, Massachusetts, who were used to doing their baking in a very particular manner.
I bet their minds would be blown by cinnamon raisin bread. Marlon Brando: actor, icon inventor? Yup.
However, take this story with a grain of salt at least two Newton biographers have done extensive research on the mans life that turned up no trace of a pet of any kind.
A new study, released in the journal Food Chemistry reveal that corn smut, also called oethe devils corn,
actually contains valuable nutrients that arent found in the corn that it feeds off. In Mexico, the fungus is called huitlacoche,
and its already considered a delicacy. But U s. farmers and the U s. government, have spent millions of dollars to eradicate the blight
the intruder smashed a plate glass window of a dessert shop in Lincoln, Neb. Inside, destruction.
and were laughing hysterically, says High society Cheesecake co-owner Marcus Morris, whod arrived at 11:30 p m. to start baking for the next day,
The High society Cheesecake caper is one of many real-life turkey dramas playing out this spring in
Attempts to transplant farm-raised turkeys the Thanksgiving dinner kind into the wild failed. The birds couldnt hack it.
Only five were caught three went to the local food pantry; two got tracking devices. Vance says humans have little to fear from wild turkeys.
The birds have spurs on their feet, wings sharpened like razors from dragging on the ground and a willingness to fight.
A careful examination of not just the kites but their locations in relation to pastures and migration routes makes it very clear that desert kites were specialized for specific types of animals.
believed to have left a prototype of the new iphone in a bar It has happened to most of us at some point:
But unluckily for this man a mobile left behind on a bar stool at a German beer garden in Redwood City,
Apple employee Gray Powell apparently left the iphone behind after celebrating his 27th birthday at the Gourmet Haus Staudt bar, not far from the computer giants Cupertino, California headquarters.
The mobile which was left behind on a bar stool by an Apple employee at a German beer garden in California Gizmodo said the person who found the phone claimed it was logged into Powells Facebook account
I underestimated how good German beer is. After trying unsuccessfully to return the iphone to its owner,
with baby lambs and chickens, and goats, and one camel. Visitors on the first day were stunned.
a government agency that protects and conserves the countrys biodiversity, and struggled to find enough resources to cope with last years fires. oewhat is most frustrating is that
and concert refreshments. While none of the technology is particularly new this system could certainly change the way we buy
has spent two decades analyzing the rich dirt that yields billions of bushels of food each year
Concerns range from worries about how nontraditional genetic traits in crops could affect human and animal health to the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds.
#Future Ag Can Better Food Create Better People? Radical transformations are brewing in the worlds oldest industry Can better food create better people?
Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people? This is exactly the premise that is driving many of the advances in farming today.
To understand agribusiness in the future, consider a model that conveniently exists right now in the human-food interface.
Metabolism is used a term to describe the various chemical reactions that take place in every cell of the body.
and monitor a persons metabolic reaction to the food eaten will cause the agriculture industry to evolve with great precision around the tiny niche demands of consumers.
The future of foods is smart foods. The food industry will resemble the bodys metabolism. Science will create real-time reactive sensors in our bodies that can read everything from the fluctuation of brainwaves, to micro changes in heartbeats, to gastro-digestive processes, to variations of skin perspiration rates.
This constant monitoring of hundreds if not thousands of bodily nuances will bring about healthier food choices and, more importantly,
choices tailored specifically to an individuals needs. The sensors will need to interface with an equally nuanced supply chain to meet the needs of this next generation, hyper-individualized consumer.
In the home of 2030, a personal monitoring system will generate a grocery list based on the anticipated needs and stated desires of that individual.
Food orders will then be placed either automatically or with as much control as the person desires.
The order will go to the local food supplier, who will be in constant communication with regional suppliers,
and they will be in constant communication with the food producers. The entire supply chain architecture will be wired to the needs of the end user.
Much like the seemingly endless iterations of coffee at Starbucks, food from restaurants and fast food outlets will come in over a million variations.
Customers will be able to order a 13.2 percent fat cheeseburger with 2. 7 grams of potassium
and banana flavoring on a sesame seed bun with exactly 47 sesame seeds on it. This may seem a ridiculous level of specificity.
It will be commonplace for a person to simply order their particular cheeseburger. Medium for me, please with only one dill pickle, no lettuce and a tomato.
Farmers will become expert at producing oejacked-in food stocks with countless variations, managed through computerized processes designed to manipulate the end results.
Controls will be exercised along a broad spectrum from environmental conditions such as light, water, and oxygen levels in the air to genetic manipulation according to approved safety guidelines.
The regulatory system for insuring ultra-safe food supplies will be monitored constantly through automated data feeds at each step of the supply chain.
Leveraging Plant Intelligenceaside from growing food, new opportunities will emerge for oegrowing products. Our ability to manipulate produce will also enable us to manipulate plants in other ways.
has been framed around the idea of creating both below-surface and above-surface silos serving as vertical greenhouses for the production of food.
This coupled with the fact that it creates a year around farming operation on greatly expanded surface area has the ability to increase the earths ability to produce food a thousand fold.
Unilever, GE, Blackmont Capital, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Ford motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, Capital One
Drinking turpentine is said to make urine smell like a rose so hundreds of years ago, women would drink turpentine
¢Eating beets can turn your urine red.¢¢Vitamin b2 makes it bright yellow.¢¢Certain blue dyes make it blue-green.¢
Can you imagine producing a sustainable biofuel that doesnt impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can
water and food in an area of desert known to be one of the hottest places on earth.
Multitasking renewable solutions It has often been said that there will be no one solution to solving the climate crisis and all those issues that surround it, such as energy sources, food prices and water supply.
and Seawater Greenhouses the design team has scaled vastly up the positive outputs of renewable energy, food production and fresh water supply.
A multiple sclerosis sufferer has treated her debilitating condition with a course of 1, 500 bee stings. Sami Chugg, 45, was diagnosed with MS in 1998
and recommended that people reduce their meat consumption while traveling around the world to save the climate.
and climate change challenge food sustainability, scientific research in agriculture will be needed more than ever. But Ms Trench-Thiedman says many of the specialist agriscientists needed to develop
and interpret all the data. oethis is where youve got satellites actually mapping the pastures and showing you where the water is and
The cows have been fed with normal cow feed. Dubbed a oegood fat, Omega-3 is an essential fatty acid necessary for human health.
It is abundant in walnuts and cold water fish like herring, mackerel and sturgeon. LINK Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati c
#FDA Pressured to Take on Food Fraud Of the hundreds of customers who bought 10 million pounds of mislabeled Vietnamese catfish including national chains
and top rated restaurants nly one or two caught the deception The expensive oesheeps milk cheese in a Manhattan market was made really from cows milk.
Some honey makers dilute their honey with sugar beets or corn syrup, their competitors say, but still market it as 100 percent pure at a premium price.
frozen catfish fillets from Vietnam as much more expensive grouper, red snapper and flounder. The fish was bought by national chain retailers,
wholesalers and food service companies, and ended up on dinner plates across the country. oefood fraud has been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup,
and appears to pose a significant problem in the seafood industry. Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies,
including E&j Gallo and Heinz USA. Such deception has been happening since Roman times, but it is getting new attention as more products are imported
and a tight economy heightens competition. And the U s. food industry says federal regulators are not doing enough to combat it. oeits growing very rapidly,
and theres more of it than you might think, said James Morehouse, a senior partner at A t. Kearney Inc,
. which is studying the issue for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the food and beverage industry.
John Spink, an expert on food and packaging fraud at Michigan State university, estimates that 5 to 7 percent of the U s. food supply is affected
but acknowledges the number could be greater. oewe know what we seized at the border,
The job of ensuring that food is labeled accurately largely rests with the Food and Drug Administration.
But it has been overwhelmed in trying to prevent food contamination and fraud has remained on a back burner.
DNA can be extracted from cells of fish and meat and from other foods, such as rice and even coffee.
Another tool, isotope ratio analysis, can determine subtle differences between food whether a fish was farmed or wild, for example,
working with scientists at the Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural history last year, discovered after analyzing DNA in 11 of 66 foods including the sheeps milk cheese
and caviar bought randomly at markets in Manhattan were mislabeled. oewe put so much emphasis on food
includes five miles of wooden bridges that connect the rooms and restaurants at treetop level. Explore the jungle
and refuel after a long day at open-air restaurants stocked with local food. Tree house Lodge The Tree house Lodge, built on the same land as the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge in Punta Uva, Costa rica, offers four types of rooms;
The hotel also bills itself as oelow density and low impact, catching rainwater for drinking, using eco-friendly detergent for towels and linens,
Have dinner on the deck as the sun goes down, and then spend the night under the palm-thatched roof.
If you can look past that, then the sceneryorgeous mangrove treesnd food (fresh, local vegetables and fish) should give you plenty to write home about.
gets three-quarters of its food from local farmers, grows an organic garden on-site, builds accommodations from recycled
Modern insects like bees and wasps rely on flowers for nectar and pollen. oethe fossil record suggests that a lot of these insect groups originated before angiosperms appeared,
There are many ways to save on food during these lean economic times. But if you want to turn lean times into lean bodies,
you might be better off shunning the typical advice of clipping more coupons and looking for sales and instead just buy less food.
where many denizens consider cheap food a constitutional right. Barry Popkin of the University of North carolina School of Public health has heard this charge
and more in his call for a tax on unhealthy foods and drinks. But unlike in centuries past
as a result of food being scarce or too expensive This week, Popkin and his colleagues have published yet another paper questioning the availability of cheap food.
As relayed in the current issue of the Archives of Internal medicine, the risk for obesity and diabetes in a community goes down as the price for fast food
and junk food rises. The reason appears to be simply because folks consume about 1 percent fewer calories from junk food with every one percent increase in the price.
Conversely, when these prices fell, body weight and diabetes rose. This is based on data from more than 5
000 participants followed for 20 years in the Coronary artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.
Save now, pay later We are fooled into buying bad foods with the notion that we are saving money,
In my local paper, The Baltimore sun, the vast majority of food coupons are for cookies, cakes, sodas and various forms of packaged goo.
In fact, the healthiest foods I find in the coupon section are frozen vegetables with the aforementioned goo, some buttery cheese concoction.
Note that I do not consider canned soup with corn syrup and over a thousand milligrams of sodium as healthful,
where the vast majority of food is unhealthy. There are never coupons for anything that I consider healthful:
fresh vegetables or even frozen ones without the goo, whole grains and lean meats and fish.
Price of health According to the USDA, an average family of two in the oethrifty food plan category spends over $75 a week on food,
My family of three spends about $50 a week on food at the most expensive supermarket in the city, Whole Foods.
then move to the sections offering bulk grains (including rice), canned beans and tomatoes, milk, eggs and maybe a piece of meat or fish.
We spend far less at Whole Foods when we are able to purchase these items at a farmers market.
my family purchased inexpensive food out of necessity. I say oeinexpensive and not oecheap because this food was relatively nourishing
but packaged without flare, so-called generic products with black and white labels stating the name of the item and the words oeno frills.
I could probably lower my weekly food bill by purchasing generic foods. Yet I sense Id spend more money if
I follow the calling of the largest food manufacturers with their lure of coupons and Big mac dollar days.
Its hard to beat homemade soup and bread for lunch at about 47 cents a serving.
A tax on unhealthy food might not be needed to discourage unhealthy consumption. People just need to understand that a healthy diet already is cheaper than the typical American diet.
LINK Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati o
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011