Facts and Honey

Today I would like to post an article about honey. I got this inspiration after I read post about it and title is the interesting fact about honey from kompas.com, they found that honey is food resource because honey contains antioxidant, vitamin, mineral and also water. Honey can make body healthy because honey contains certain of enzyme that can help body to digest food and to keep the system immune did well. Honey can also heal allergic, infection, and burn.

You know, honey is good for beauty, especially to heal acnes; I have some tips for it because I have tried before, and it worked. That is a mask from honey; you need honey and orange squeeze. Heat the honey and orange squeeze to low heat, stir to combine or just honey comes to warm. And let it cool to room temperature, after that you can put the mask on your face just for 20 minutes, you also can do lightly message except the area around your eyes. And rinse with warm water and cotton, do it regularly and you will find the acnes recover thoroughly.

Honey produced by bees using nectar from blooms, honey is sweet because it contains monosaccharide, fructose and glucose. You know that honey has low water activity; it is just 0.6 that is way most microorganisms do not grow in honey. Even so, occasionally honey contains dormant bacterium, named Clostridium botulinium. Scientists found that bacteria can be dangerous to children less than one year because the bacteria can lead babies to illness and even death. Even though the risk to infant health is small, it is not suggested to take the risk (Infant Botulism and Honey).

In history, it seemed that humans began hunting for honey no less than 8000 years ago, as proved by a cave painting in Valencia, Spain. In early Egypt, honey was used to make sweeter cakes and also biscuits, and many other dishes. Ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern peoples used honey for preserving dead body, or often called embalming.

Honey in religious meaning, especially in Islam, the Qur’an advances honey as a nutritious and healthy food. According to hadith, Prophet Muhammad SAW strongly suggested honey for healing purposes (Sahih Bukhari). 

There is Quran Surah Al-Nahl which means the honey bee. Here is the English translation of those specific verses.

And your Lord inspired the bee(s) saying: “Take your habitations in the mountains and in the trees and in what they erect. Then, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of your Lord made easy (for you). “There comes forth from their bellies, a drink of varying color wherein is healing for mankind. Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think. (Q.S Al-Nahl: 68-69).

Here is a table of nutrition, courtesy of Wikipedia 

Honey in classification by packaging and processing, divided into several kinds. Those are: Crystallized honey also called granulated honey or candied honey. Pasteurized honey is honey that has been heated in a pasteurization process. Raw honey is often labeled as raw honey. Strained honey is like propolis. Filtered honey, Ultrasonicated honey, Creamed honey, Dried honey, Comb honey, and Chunk honey. 

Truly, I just know there are so many sorts of honey. Well, that is all I wanted to say. Honey is good for health, so why don’t we eat honey now.

chicken behavior

Today I would like to share about chicken behavioral patterns. I am just interested to talk about it. Sometimes I am curious and ask to myself about what chicken is doing, does it have a meaning or no? So I browsed the net and yes, I found some information of it. And here it is.

Ethology is study of animal behavioral patterns or the study of the behavior of animal in their natural habit, usually proposing evolutionary explanations. That behavior means the expression of animal that poured into moves on consequence of stimulation (Prijono and Handini, 1998). The stimulation is coming from the body inside and outside of animal (Scott, 1969). The outside stimulation could be sound, view, mechanical energy, and chemical stimulus, whereas inside stimulation could be factors of hormone secretion, and motivation (Mukhtar, 1986). Hailman (1985) revealed that animal behavioral patterns have divided into eight categories. Those are acted of moving (fly, jump, walk), kept the body, ate, resisted, sexualized, nested, mothered, and interspecific behavior. And here I just get down about eating, drinking, sleeping, and pecking behavior of chicken.

The first is about eating behavior in chicken. Eating behavior of fowls is influenced by the length of daylight, and the social environment around. Chickens cannot eat within dark situation or if the length daylight is short (Morris, 1967). Metabolic rate of fowls is faster than others animals, therefore the lack nutrition in their food will stand out (Welty, 1979). Eating behavior is also influenced by temperature, and other activities of chickens. When the temperature increases, the fowls will retard the speed of metabolism by decreasing appetite in order to establish a normal temperature in their body (Priyanto, 2002).

Secondly, drinking behavior has close related to eating behavior. There are many factors that influence fowls to consume water; those are temperature, water temperature, the level of consumptive food, and body size (Bailey, 1990; Wandoyo, 1997). In the tropic, chicken can consume 500 ml/day (Williamson and Payne, 2003). When chicken drinks water, chicken let its beak down, and then its maw slopes as well as raises its head on the back (Sparks and Andrew, 1982).

Thirdly is sleeping behavior of fowls. Sleeping activity is necessary for chicken to keep and cool down the body from exhaustion. Chicken usually sleeps in position the body falls down along with chest adheres and the eyes closed during 30 seconds on minimum (Mayes, 1983).

Pecking behavior is term on a day to day basis for social organization hierarchy system of chicken. This behavior revealed for the first time by Thorlief Schjelderup-Ebbe in 1921 (Wikipedia, 2012). Pecking behavior has classification as cannibalism (Savory, 1995). Pecking activity with higher frequency can be happened because the stall density is near with its food. Pecking activity of hen is visible often on battery-stall, because it is easy to keep its body cleaned by sweeping with its beak. (Appleby at al, 1992). The fowls do an activity such as threaten, fight, and flee by pecking (Hailman, 1985). Pecking activity shows also dominance and attacker characteristics (Appleby at al., 1992).

forensic

A few months ago, my friends had a presentation about forensic.  And now I’m interested to share about it in my blog. First of all I want to thank to friends of mine who gave me the article about forensic. Actually, it’s their assignment, LOL. And here my review is.

Forensic is the study of crime scene investigation, generally connected to the justice to gather the right indication to resolve the crime. And as we know that CSI or crime science investigation is the methods by using all science disciplines to reveal the cases by reconstructing and collecting the evidence.

The branches of forensic have divided into several branches which are distinguished by the view.  The several branches of forensic are medical forensic, physical forensic, chemical forensic, photography forensic, biological forensic, and many more. Biology is always fascinating to me, so I take biological forensic to be explained. And you know that biological forensic has divided into several branches, those are entomology forensic, toxicology forensic, botanical forensic, microbiological forensic, molecular forensic, and many more.

When we need to identify of illegal logging, foods quality and legality, sexual assaults and paternity tests, we take molecular biology method to know the answers. How does it work? It is exactly by identifying of DNA in the crime scene. DNA is full form Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is a substance carrying organism’s genetic information, a nucleic acid molecule in the form of twisted double strand double helix, DNA that is found in all living organisms except some viruses, reproduces itself and is the means by which hereditary characteristics pass from one generation to the next.

You know that the most of three billion bases in human DNA are precisely the same. DNA has 99.8% of the similarities and only 0.2% of the difference. And it’s more enough to distinguish one to another. So, that is way we can analyze the DNA.  The bases or letters in human DNA can be removed and added, and the region of the DNA can be repeated to be different kind of times. There are two types of analyzing the DNA in the main; those are Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) and Mitochondrial DNA.

Firstly, Short Tandem Repeats has divided into two types of identification. The first is Locus or Loci, relates to the location of chromosome and allele. The second is type of DNA, the allele will become the number of how many DNA have been repeated.  There are some of the basic steps of the analysis. Those are extraction and amplification and separation. Extraction is the step of separating DNA from the sample, and amplification came to be called PCR is the step to amplify small portion of DNA, then separation is to separate the amplified fragment length polymorphism (method for detecting DNA variations) accords to size by using ABI 310 Genetic Analyzer.

Secondly is Mitochondrial DNA, we can use mitochondria because the mitochondria each have multiple copies in every single cell. MtDNA is usually used for old and degraded samples. In MtDNA the sequences are examined. There are the basic steps to analyze DNA, first is extraction is used to separate DNA from the samples, second is amplification of PCR is used to amplify small portion of mtDNA (D loop). And thirdly, sequencing is used by another reaction and separation of sequenced fragment.

That is all I want to share here, though I know my review is still coming up short information so much about forensic, because I get slothfulness latterly. But I will do my best for the next chapter. I accept every comments and thanks for your visit.

Phytoremediation

I think it is a flagging topic. The method is to clean up the land which is contaminated pollutants by using bioremediation. And now I am eager to discus about phytoremediation that is a part of bioremediation methods.

As I have already told about bioremediation, but not just the microbes and fungi, the plant also can be used to eliminating the chemical waste by the sub-bioremediation called phytoremediation. And the plant will process the chemical waste to change them to be oxygen.

Phytoremediation is a mouthful to say and tough to spell correctly. It is a term that was coined by Dr. Ilya Raskin who was sent as part of the IAEA taskforce to clean up after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster. It is basically, a way to clean soil and groundwater that has been contaminated with radiation or heavy metals by using certain green plants. These green plants extract and contain harmful elements within their ecosystem and thus remove them from the soil and water.

Remember when I had assignment at school about bioremediation, I found an interesting topic about phytoremediation by using a bamboo. In Japan, it’s about 300 km from the Fukushima Power plant, and every day Japanese society sees disturbing images of smoke pouring out of the number 3 and 2 reactors. Japanese society also sees farmers and fishermen complaining about the loss of their livelihoods because of the nuclear disaster. The quicker they can get the reactor under control and start to clear up the better. And they thought about how to clean up the environment from pollution, they used phytoremediation.

After the nuclear disaster hemp was extensively planted around the worst affected areas. Hemp like bamboo grows quickly and helped to reduce levels of iodine, cesium-137, strontium, and plutonium from the soil. Since bamboo grows everywhere in Japan already and requires no inputs of fertilizers and pesticides to flourish, it is the ideal candidate for phytoremediation. And of course, afterwards the bamboo can be used for a whole plethora of purposes. Bamboo represents some advantages versus the traditional water plants such as, the same level of treatment, and lower density for plantation (1 plant/m² instead of 6-11 plants/m²), and also maintain green all the year round, “Phragmites Australls” becomes brown in the winter period and give a bad aspect to the unit during 4-5 months/year, and there’s no competition of other plants when in South Europe, Phragmites Australls can be dominated by other grasses, and the last is a less maintenance.

In conclusion, Phytoremediation employs the use of plants, alone or together with their associated microorganisms, to degrade, contain or stabilize various environmental contaminants in soil, water, and air. Bamboo may be used to decontaminate soil and water by phytoremediation, a natural way of removing pollutants using plants, restoring soil to statutory safe limits.

Bioremediation

We have already known that the environment is contaminated pollution since 2000 until now. The scientists tried to solve the environment problems by using bioremediation methods, why? It is because bioremediation is safe to the environment and humankind, lower cost, and also permanents to environment because it makes the contaminant degraded. Do you that Japan use phytoremediation methods to clean up the nuclear leak? Yes, phytoremediation is a part of bioremediation to clean up the nuclear leak. Phytoremediation method is cleaning up pollution through the use of plants and their microorganisms. In Japan, the scientists have still processed the phytoremediation by using a bamboo. They use this method because it is safe for the environment and can defect the global warming.

The population in this world has increased; therefore it creates more big problems. Like climate change, pollution, mutation, and chemical waste. The problems become worldwide; the estimated number of contaminated sites is significant. It is now widely recognized that contaminated land is a potential threat to human health, and it is continual discovery over recent years has led to international efforts to remedy many of these sites, either as a response to the risk of adverse health of environmental effect caused by contamination to enable the site to be redeveloped for use. One of the methods is to recover the environmental by using bioremediation process.

Bioremediation allows natural processes to clean up harmful chemicals in the environment. Microscopic “bugs” or microbes and fungi that live in soil and groundwater like to eat certain harmful chemical, such as those found in gasoline and oil spills. When microbes completely digest these chemicals, they change them into water and harmless gases such as carbon dioxide. 

The good idea is to use bioremediation to treat the environment which is contaminated with pollutants. Why? Because it is made a promising approach, such as, it would permanence, it is because contaminant was degraded, and it had potentially low cost, 60-90% less than other technologies.

SETI

Do you know what SETI is? I think ever body has already known about it. Yes, SETI  is from the initial letters of “the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence”, SETI is the science by using telescope, radio, and optical to find the signals from alien civilizations on the skies.

The idea of SETI began from the publication of a paper in the British journal Nature by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison in 1959. The paper discussed about the possibility of the existence of alien civilizations and how we might be able to detect them. And their conclusion was radio waves that easiest method to detect alien civilizations. Why the scientists chose radio waves to detect signals from other civilizations? It was because radio waves were able to travel the massive distances between stars. Radio waves could be produced with rational amounts of power.

In the 30 years since the early Ozma which was conducted in 1960 by Frank Drake, many other have been carried out for more responsive equipment, overmuch longer time frames, observing the thousands of stars. No further there’re no signals from alien civilizations which had been detected, but the scientist had not to stop giving up, they had begun to scratch the surface. They have known that there’re many skies and frequencies that signals could be received on. Lately, the scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have tied together the internet to attack this problem. And if you wish for joining, here the address is http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

Rose

Rose in family Rosacea, is herb with thorny stem. In history, rose or “queen of flower” was a symbol of life of religion. Rose was from China, middle-east, and east-Europe. But now we can see roses in our own country. Roses amended and spread vastly in other countries especially in country which has subtropical and tropical season. Rose has many varieties in color, from white to crimson and has high productivity, it’s about 120-280 buds/m²/year. That’s why we can find roses easily.

Calyx, leaf, and root of rose contain polyphenol. And its leaf contains saponin and tannin, whereas the root contains saponin and flavonoid.

The calyx has known as a cough medicine. Just take three calyxes, and put it all in stew pan and pour with a glass of hot water, after that drink it up.

Roses actually have aura and high energy. Immerse in bath up full of rose calyxes can rise somebody’s feelings especially into good mood.

Study from New England journal of medicine found that someone has diabetes that immerses in warm water with rose calyxes in 30 minutes can reduce the blood sugar as much

Study from Japan found that immerses in warm water during 10 minutes is good for health especially for heart. It can also smooth the blood stream, and reduce pain and stress.