Caffeine enhances honeybees memory

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Coffee and memory enhancement

HONEYBEE FLOWER Coffee has been used since ages ago and became part of our lives ever since we can recall. My farthest memory of coffee goes back to my childhood, when I used to see my father enjoying it at home after every meal. It wasn't until later on that I tried it and to be honest, at the beginning I didn't even like it. It's bitter taste and long-lasting flavor didn't attract me at all.

Later on I discovered that it wasn't its taste what I'd be looking for but its potential to enhance my general quality of life, or even my physical and mental performance, keeping me awake during the long nights in which I had to study or work, something for which caffeine, one of the active constituents of coffee is responsible for.

Anyway these properties of coffee seem not to be the only ones, recently a study published by the Center for Behavior and Evolution, Institute of Neuroscience from Newcastle University, has proven that caffeine present in nectar of Coffea and Citrus species has the ability to alter pollinator behavior by enhancing their memory of reward, making honeybees three times as likely to remember a floral scent than those being rewarded only with sucrose alone. Image: Honeybee by Otota Dana under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

COFFEA ARABICA

Family: Rubiaceae
Genus: Coffea
Common name: Coffee

Baobab the oldest known angiosperm tree

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Baobab tree, a natural deposit of 25,000 liters of water

Baobab trees (Adansonia digitata), are very common in most of the dry parts of Africa. The Baobab tree botanical name is Adansonia digitata but it is also known in English language as African baobab, Baobab of Mahajanga (Madagascar), Cream-tartar tree, Dead-rat tree (South Africa), Ethiopian sour bread, Monkey-bread tree (South Africa), Sour gourd and बाओबाब Baaobaab in Hindi.

Baobab trees usually grow solitary, as a distinctive image of the African Savannah [10] being commonly found in many countries as Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Senegal [11], but it can also be found in India, where it was brought from Africa hundreds of years ago. Some individual Baobab trees living over a thousand years of age [10]. The largest known Baobab tree known, the Grootboom, collapsed unexpectedly in northeastern Namibia back in 2004.

Grootboom wood samples collected from different areas of the trunk were processed and investigated by accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating, giving an estimated age greater than 1000 years "before present", meaning that the corresponding calibrated calendar age of the oldest sample was approximately 1275 years old, making Grootboom the oldest known angiosperm tree with reliable dating results [12]. Until the end of the rainy season the Grootboom was still healthy and alive but for unknown reasons that tree cease to exist. Image: Baobab by Stuart Basil under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

ADANSONIA DIGITATA

Family: Malvaceae
Genus: Adansonia
Common name: African baobab, Baobab of Mahajanga (Madagascar), Cream-tartar tree, Dead-rat tree (South Africa), Ethiopian sour bread, Monkey-bread tree (South Africa), Sour gourd and बाओबाब Baaobaab in Hindi [8].

Country taste tomatoes

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Why are tomatoes loosing taste?

TOMATOES Nature will never stop amazing me, from the strange charm of carnivorous plants to the breathtaking beauty of the most amazing flowers on earth. When I was a child I grew up in a very little village where I used to be surrounded by nature and its wonders, I never thought that had anything special. Later on I moved to a big city and realized most of the things I gave for granted were in fact a gift that would hardly ever be back.

Don't get me wrong, as a child I was also amazed by some of the things I found in that big city, a huge school with hundreds of children the start up of the computer world and the internet, skyscrapers and cinemas, yeah, what an amazing world, or not?

Well, this first impression and attracting charm only lasted for a few years. In my adulthood started to miss many things as the snow, the salads, what about the salads? I never got back that taste I got from my village tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, it tasted nothing. In my village I used to have large, colorful, tasty tomatoes just with salt and pepper and they tasted simply great. In fact years later I learned I wasn't the only one thinking that, German consumers called Dutch industrially grown tomatoes "Wasserbomben" or water bombs for their lack of taste. Image: Pà amb tomàquet by Joan Grifols under Creative Common license (CC BY-SA 2.0).

SOLANUM LYCOPERSICUM

Family: Solanaceae
Genus: Solanum
Common name: Tomato

Asian herbal medicine warning

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Aristolochia clematitis and kidney failure

ARISTOLOCHIA CLEMATITIS Nature can heal but it may also kill, specially when lack of information or professional advice on its use is lacking. In fact herbs and herbal supplements have been used for medicinal purposes since thousands of years, some of them being the source of well known medicines as aspirine, atropine, berberine, codeine, morphine, quinine, salicin, taxol, thymol and so many others.

There are some herbs that are already known to exert deadly properties though as Aconitum Ferox for example, an herb that is part of some Ayurvedic medicines and preparations as Mahamrutynjaya rasa, a preparation that contains Aconitum ferox, Piper nibrum and Piper longum, and the active constituents aconitine and piperine [1], this example highlights the importance of care and professional advice when using herbs and herbal medicines.

In that line, a group of prestigious scientists from the well-known King's College of London, have blown the whistle on the dangers that some herbal medicines coming from Asia but widely available worldwide entail for human health, namely those ones rich in aristolochic acid, a chemical that has been reviewed by scientists for its nephropathy, a kind of kidney failure caused by the intake of these type of acids. Aristolochic nephropathy is developed due to the use of Chinese herbs as therapeutic remedies in slimming diets [4]. Image: Aristochia clematitis by Radio Tonreg under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

ARISTOLOCHIA CLEMATITIS

Family: Aristolochiaceae
Genus: Aristolochia
Common name: Clematitis

Mint tea benefits

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Some of the health benefits of mint tea explained

BENEFITS OF MINT TEA

Two of the most common varieties of mint are spearmint and peppermint, both remarkably healthy and full of properties and health benefits. Spermint (Mentha viridis) and Peppermint (Mentha Spicata) are very similar to each other while still possible to distinguish them if you pay attention.

The leaves of spearmint are remarkably longer and of a lighter green color, being its scent less attractive than that one of peppermint, maybe this is one of the reasons why peppermint tea is much more common than spearmint tea, in spite spearmint tea became quite popular after research demonstrated that spearmint tea may be used as a treatment for hirsutism (excessive hairiness on women). Its anti-androgenic properties reduce the level of free testosterone in the blood.

Mentha piperita (Peppermint) has significant antimicrobial and antiviral activities, strong antioxidant and antitumor actions, and some antiallergenic potential [5], but these are not the only ones, let's see some other mint tea benefits. Image: Lychee mint iced tea by Andrea Goh under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

MENTHA PIPERITA

Family: Lamiaceae
Genus: Mentha
Common name: Peppermint.

The benefits of garlic

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The health benefits of garlic

BENEFITS OF GARLIC

Garlic (Allium sativum), a plant native to central Asia, has been used since thousands of years ago for culinary and as medicinal purposes, being part of ancient natural remedies for the treatment of some of the most common ailments and illnesses, as well as for some of its health benefits and properties, among which we can mention being a natural expectorant and an antimicrobial agent. This article will try to cover the most important benefits of garlic and how have these ones been proven in some of the most relevant studies on this subject.

Sumerians, Chinese, ancient Indians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Tibetans, Slavic, Arabic and the list goes on and on naming hundreds of cultures that used garlic not only for its known culinary properties but for its health benefits and as a well-trusted universal folk remedy for the treatment of various illnesses and ailments. Some cultures still know garlic as ‘Russian penicillin’, ‘natural antibiotic’, ‘vegetable viagra’, ‘plant talisman’, ‘rustic's theriac’ and ‘snake grass’ [5,6].

In the past, garlic was used as a folk remedy during various epidemics such as typhus, dysentery, cholera, influenza, and whenever an epidemic has emerged. Garlic has been the first preventive and curative remedy [5,6]. Now, back to the subject, who didn't heard about the saying that onions and garlic collect and kill the flu (influenza) virus spread since its origins time ago in the 1919? I found it interesting enough to enter a little bit deeper and see if there were probably other reasons to believe garlic and onions really got this claimed anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties. But let's see what we found about Garlic (Allium sativum) and onion (Allium cepa), it may surprise some of us at the end. Image (taken with Nikon D200): Garlic by Mo Riza under Creative Common license (CC BY 2.0).

ALLIUM SATIVUM

Family: Amaryllidaceae
Genus: Allium
Common name: Garlic.

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AFRICAN MANGO EXTRACT
Green tea polyphenols and weight loss
Weight loss beans
Tannins from Sorghum, a weight loss cereal
Natural diets
Milk protein and tea for weight loss

Grapes and prostate cancer
Grapes and Alzheimer
Grapes and inflammation
Raisins for blood sugar
Grape seeds and prostate cancer

The strongest antioxidant
The strongest poisonous plant
The strongest seed

Aesculum hippocastanum
Garlic
Laurel leaf

Super weeds
POLLEN-FREE FLOWERS
NON-BROWNING APPLES

ACNE
High blood pressure
Grapes and inflammation
Gingivitis

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HEALTH BENEFITS OF ARGAN OIL
HEALTH BENEFITS OF PITANGAS
HEALTH BENEFITS OF BLUEBERRIES
HEALTH BENEFITS OF CINNAMON
HEALTH BENEFITS OF GINKGO BILOBA
HEALTH BENEFITS OF ALOE VERA
HEALTH BENEFITS OF DATES
HEALTH BENEFITS OF ACHIOTE
HEALTH BENEFITS OF COFFEE
HEALTH BENEFITS OF WASABI

GREEN TEA BOOSTS BRAIN CELL PRODUCTION
GREEN TEA FOR WEIGHT LOSS
GREEN TEA ANTI-CANCER PROPERTIES
GREEN TEA BENEFITS

VIRGIN'S MANTLE FOR BREAST CANCER
BANANA TUMOR NECROSIS FACTOR
MEDITERRANEAN DIET AND OLIVE OIL BENEFICIAL FOR BONES
AYAHUASCA, AMAZONIAN VINE OF THE SOUL

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Caffeine enhances honeybees memory

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