Coffee is a good beverage choice

Coffee once deemed harmful to health is turning out to be in many ways a beneficial one. It could protect against diabetes, heart disease and stroke, liver cancer, cirrhosis and Parkinson's disease and increase athletic performance. Lots of new research, and the recognition that older, negative studies often failed to tease apart the effects of coffee and those of smoking because so many coffee drinkers were also smokers. "Coffee is a complex beverage with hundreds, if not thousands, of bioactive ingredients, a cup of coffee is 2% caffeine, 98% other stuff."

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-coffee18-2009may18,0,7483815.column

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Africanized honey bees move north

They used to be called killer bees, after a cross-breeding experiment went awry between European and African bees in Brazil, back in 1957. The bees have been cross-breeding and became tamer as they moved north, reaching Texas in 1990, and Utah this past February. Africanized honey bees are no friend to local bee keepers. They don't make much honey and they are aggressive. A hive of Africanized honey bees has been discovered in Cedar City. The bees survived the winter indoors, in the eaves of a house but are running out of tricks in their attempt to make the trip north.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/state/story/Africanized-bees-move-north-in-Utah/f4Jf28z0aEG9WD1GCYn0vg.cspx

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Green tea extract reported to show promise against leukemia

Scientists are reporting positive results in early leukemia clinical trials using the chemical epigallocatechin gallate, a subtance in green tea. The findings appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Green tea is made with the leaves of Camellia Sinesis, a shrub native to Asia. After the research showed dramatic effectiveness in killing leukemia cells, the findings were applied to studies on animal tissues and then on human cells in the lab. The research has moved to the second phase of clinical testing in a follow-up trial, already fully enrolled, involving roughly the same number of patients. All will receive the highest dose administered from the previous trial.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090526-gallate.htm

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Honey bees are still disappearing

Brownfield Network reported on a recent survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the USDA shows we are still losing honey bees at an alarming rate. The survey found that from last September through this April we lost approximately 29 percent of our honey bee colonies. While that is a sobering number, it is actually a reduction from the 36 percent loss in 2007-2008 and the 32 percent loss in 2006-2007.

The survey checked on about 20 percent of the country's 2.3 million colonies. About 26 percent of apiaries surveyed reported that some of their colonies died of colony collapse disorder (CCD), down from 36 percent of apiaries in 2007-2008. There is still no known cause for CCD, the bees just disappears. A complete analysis of the data gathered will be published later this year.

Related Links:Read the survey

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