Honey bees selectively avoid difficult choices.

By Seriously Science 


Photo: flickr/James Diedrick

I don’t know about you, but I totally avoid making difficult choices, particularly when there doesn’t seem to be any way to determine the what the correct decision might be. Surprisingly, the study shown here suggests that honeybees might approach decisions in the same way. The experiments consisted of decision tests of different levels of difficulty: the “easy choices” were a reward (sugar, yum!) placed clearly above or below a visual reference, and a punishment (quinine, yuck!) in the other position. “Hard choices” were represented by the reward being offset but overlapping with the visual reference, and “impossible choices” were actually impossible to predict: “For impossible trials (so-called because objectively they had no correct answer and therefore were rewarded pseudorandomly), the centers of both targets were in line with that of the reference.” Honeybees were allowed to choose to either be rewarded, punished, or to “opt out” and fly away. It turns out, when presented with harder choices, the bees were more likely to “opt out”, indicating that when the “right answer” is less obvious, the best choice may be to make no choice at all (at least if you are a bee… or me!).

Honey bees selectively avoid difficult choices.

“Human decision-making strategies are strongly influenced by an awareness of certainty or uncertainty (a form of metacognition) to increase the chances of making a right choice. Humans seek more information and defer choosing when they realize they have insufficient information to make an accurate decision, but whether animals are aware of uncertainty is currently highly contentious. To explore this issue, we examined how honey bees (Apis mellifera) responded to a visual discrimination task that varied in difficulty between trials. Free-flying bees were rewarded for a correct choice, punished for an incorrect choice, or could avoid choosing by exiting the trial (opting out). Bees opted out more often on difficult trials, and opting out improved their proportion of successful trials. Bees could also transfer the concept of opting out to a novel task. Our data show that bees selectively avoid difficult tasks they lack the information to solve. This finding has been considered as evidence that nonhuman animals can assess the certainty of a predicted outcome, and bees’ performance was comparable to that of primates in a similar paradigm. We discuss whether these behavioral results prove bees react to uncertainty or whether associative mechanisms can explain such findings. To better frame metacognition as an issue for neurobiological investigation, we propose a neurobiological hypothesis of uncertainty monitoring based on the known circuitry of the honey bee brain.”

Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2013/11/12/honey-bees-selectively-avoid-difficult-choices/#.Uozps8SnpB4

Kebaikan Madu, Gamat, Susu Kambing

Dapatckan petua-petua menngunakan madu. Click Here!

Madu, Gamat, Daun ginkgo biloba

Untuk mengekalkan tahap kesihatan, pengambilan makanan yang seimbang dan berkhasiat adalah penting dalam setiap sajian. Terdapat pelbagai pilihan makanan yang kita boleh ambil. Salah satu sebagai makanan tambahan yang mampu memberikan zat dan nutrien yang tidak terdapat dalam makanan utama. Tiga makanan berikut adalah makanan diperakui sebagai makanan yang bukan sahaja memberikan khasiat tambahan, malah boleh membantu memulihkan pelbagai masalah kesihatan.

Khazanah dari dalam laut

Gamat adalah sejenis haiwan laut yang bernilai tinggi. Ia berbentuk seperti sosej, kulit yang keras dan memanjang. Khasiat gamat telah diperakui sejak sekian lama untuk menyembuhkan luka dan sebagai ubat penahan sakit semula jadi.

Kajian daripada penyelidik tempatan dan luar mendapati bahawa gamat mengandungi kandungan protein, karbohidrat, zat galian dan asid lemak yang tinggi. Ia juga mengandungi pelbagai asid lemak omega-3, dan vitamin A, B1, B2, C beserta garam galian seperti kalsium, magnesium, zink dan zat besi.

Salah satu elemen penting di dalam gamat adalah kandungan kolagennya yang tinggi iaitu sebanyak 92 peratus. Dengan komposisi yang banyak ini, ia mampu memerangi kesan penuaan, kemerosotan prestasi sel di dalam badan manusia malah mempercepatkan pertumbuhan sel-sel baru yang telah rosak.

Gamat juga baik dikatakan untuk meredakan sakit sendi, mengurangkan ketegangan otot dan mengurangkan bengkak akibat digigit serangga. Kolagen daripada gamat juga membantu meningkatkan kadar kolagen asli di dalam badan dan seterusnya menganjalkan kulit supaya menjadi awet muda.

Penawar daripada madu

Madu adalah salah satu bahan makanan yang mempunyai sifat penyembuh semula jadi. Ia sudah dikenali sejak zaman dahulu sebagai salah satu sumber makanan yang baik untuk kecantikan dan kesihatan dalaman.

Dalam perubatan Islam, madu sering digunakan sebagai ubat untuk membantu meringankan sakit seperti membersihkan kotoran di dalam usus, menormalkan kelembapan tubuh badan, mancairkan kahak dan menguatkan sistem pertahanan tubuh.

Menurut Dr. Susan Percival dari Jabatan Nutrisi Manusia dan Sains Makanan, Universiti Florida, Amerika Syarikat, madu mengandungi pelbagai kandungan mineral dan vitamin seperti B6, tiamina, miacin, ribotlorina dan asid pontohenic. Ia juga mengandungi zat-zat seperti kalsium, zat besi, kuprum, magnesium, manganese, fosforus, potasium, sodium dan zink.

Madu turut mengandungi vitamin B1, B2, C, B6 dan B3. Komposisinya berubah-ubah sesuai dengan kualiti madu bunga dan serbuk sari yang diperoleh lebah. Madu berperanan sebagai anti oksida dalam badan manusia yang mampu menghapuskan bahan-bahan radikal yang menjadi penyebab utama kepada penyakit-penyakit kronik. Kajian terkini membuktikan, kandungan madu lebah yang terdiri daripada bahan semula jadi pelbagai gula seperti glukos dan fruktos ini mampu meningkatkan stamina.

Madu boleh diamalkan dalam diet seharian kerana madu sesuai dijadikan pengganti gula sekaligus dapat menjaga kesihatan badan. Selain itu, amalan minum air madu hangat selepas makan boleh membantu melancarkan pencernaan serta meningkatkan metabolism tubuh.

Dari segi kecantikan, madu sebenarnya telah lama digunakan untuk mencantik, menghalus, melembab dan mengawal keanjalan kulit.

Artikel Penuh: http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/Kesihatan/20131013/kn_01/Kebaikan-Madu-Gamat-Susu-Kambing#ixzz2iTRJe2L2
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Peroleh RM1,000 seminggu

DAPATKAN RAHSIA KHASIAT MADU. Click Here!

Dari kiri: Mohd Ariffin dan Ahmad tidak melepaskan peluang menikmati madu lebah kelulut dari koloninya menggunakan penyedut minuman.

PASIR MAS - Setiap graduan yang tamat pengajian pasti mengimpikan untuk bekerja dengan sesebuah organisasi dan mendapat upah setimpal dengan usaha selama ini.

Namun tidak bagi anak jati Kampung Jintan, Chetok, iaitu Azeman Jaya, 22, atau lebih dikenali sebagai Tok Cik apabila dia memilih untuk mengusahakan ternakan lebah kelulut bagi mencari rezeki yang halal.

Walaupun pada peringkat awal pilihannya itu sering diragui namun, berkat usaha dan keyakinan diri, Azeman mengorak langkah cuba membuktikan kelainan yang dilakukannya itu.

Cabar diri sendiri

Berbekalkan pengalaman yang diperoleh sepanjang pengajian di Institusi Vaterina, Kluang, Johor, Azeman mencabar dirinya dengan memulakan ternakan lebah kelulut secara kecil-kecilan.

“Ramai graduan sekarang yang memasang angan-angan untuk makan gaji tetapi tidak bagi saya kerana dengan bekerja sendiri juga kita mampu berjaya dalam hidup.

“Bermula dengan modal RM10,000 hasil bantuan adik-beradik, saya hanya menggunakan kawasan halaman rumah untuk ternakan ini,” katanya kepada Sinar Harian.

Menurutnya, yang juga anak bongsu daripada lapan beradik itu, halaman rumah yang dipenuhi dengan pokok buah-buahan memberi kelebihan kepada usahanya itu kerana ia dapat menarik minat lebah kelulut.

Katanya, selepas enam bulan bersusah payah berusaha akhirnya dia berjaya menghasilkan 350 koloni kelulut yang diletakkan di sekitar kawasan rumahnya.

“Daripada jumlah itu, 30 koloni sudah berjaya menghasilkan madu,” katanya.

Pendapatan lumayan

Azeman berkata, madu yang dikumpulkan dijual dengan harga serendah RM50 bagi 200 gram, manakala RM140 untuk sekilogram.

“Oleh kerana madu lebah kelulut mempunyai banyak khasiat, terutama sebagai penawar penyakit kencing manis, darah tinggi, asma dan sebagainya, ia sering mendapat permintaan yang tinggi daripada pembeli.

“Kadang-kadang permintaan yang diterima lebih tinggi daripada hasil pengeluaran,” katanya yang memperoleh pendapatan RM1,000 seminggu hasil ternakan itu.

Azeman berkata, melihat kepada sambutan yang diterima, dia bercadang untuk membuka sebuah ladang kelulut di tanah peninggalan keluarga untuk mendapatkan bekalan madu yang lebih banyak pada masa akan datang.

“Ia masih lagi di peringkat perancangan dan saya berharap dengan sokongan ramai impian ini akan menjadi kenyataan,” katanya.

Galak anak muda

Sementara itu, Ketua Pengarah Lembaga Pemasaran Pertanian Persekutuan (Fama), Datuk Ahmad Ishak berkata, beliau menggalakkan petani atau pengusaha muda yang ingin berkecimpung dalam bidang ternakan lebah kelulut tersebut.

“Kami bersedia untuk membantu dari segi mempromosikan madu ini kerana dengan adanya penghasilan madu lebah kelulut ia dapat menambahkan koleksi madu yang ada di Fama, selain madu lebah dan tualang,” katanya semasa mengadakan lawatan
khas ke ladang ternakan kelulut Sungai Lombong Agro Farm milik Azeman, di sini.

Hadir sama, Pengarah Fama Wilayah Timur 1, Mohd Ariffin Awang.

Menurutnya, usaha yang dipraktikkan Azeman cukup kreatif terutama penggunaan sumbar asli dalam menghasilkan madu tersebut.

Beliau berharap Azeman dapat melakukan lebih banyak pengeluaran madu agar ia dapat dipasarkan dengan lebih meluas lagi.

Sumber: http://www.sinarharian.com.my/peroleh-rm1-000-seminggu-1.202919

Who, what, why: How do you track a honey bee?

By Denise WintermanBBC News Magazine

The latest research investigating why honey bees are dying involves tracking the small insects, but how do you track a bee?

Bee numbers have been falling dramatically and scientists are trying to understand why. In the past 25 years honey bee numbers in England have more than halved and they are still decreasing. It is a similar story elsewhere in the UK and in other countries.

Bees of all types - there are hundreds of them - play a huge role in the life of the countryside and a third of what we eat is reliant on bee pollination. Studying the behaviour of these complex insects is crucial to finding out what is happening but it is also a big challenge.

The answer

• A tiny antenna is glued to the thorax of the insect
• A radar transmitter emits a signal
• A diode in the centre of the antenna converts it into a unique signal that researchers can track

 honey bee can visit several thousand flowers in one day and navigate over several kilometres, so how do you track one?

Scientists are using harmonic radar technology. A radar transmitter emits a signal which is received by a tiny antenna glued on a honey bee's thorax (back). A small diode in the centre of the antenna converts it into a different wavelength that can be detected and followed.

The converted signal is unique. There is no other source in the environment, so scientists know it's the tagged honey bee. A portable radar tracking station is used to transmit the signal and gather the information sent back.

The system was developed by scientists at the Natural Resources Institute and is operated by scientists at Rothamsted Research, a government-funded agricultural research centre in Hertfordshire. It's currently being used in several major research projects.

Read more at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23448846

Honeybees Self-Medicate with Anti-Fungal Resin

The Honey, Garlic And Vinegar Miracle, Click Here!

Propolis (yellow) lining the inside of a beehive.

Beekeepers would love to get rid of propolis, a sticky substance made of resins that bees use to line their hives, because it makes it hard to pry hives open. But propolis isn’t just gluing the hive together, according to a new study published in PLoS ONE—honeybees use it to fight off fungal infections and seek it out when their hives are infected.

Bees have to invest effort in hunting down the resins that make up propolis, which like nectar is foraged from plants. That means that every minute a bee is looking for resin is a minute it’s not looking for food. The trade-off is worth it, apparently, because propolis kills bacteria and fungi lurking in the colony.

In this new study, the authors looked at whether propolis helped stop a fungal infection called chalkbrood that kills larvae. When experimenters painted propolis extract on hives, these propolis-enriched hives had lower rates of chalkbrood infection. And when colonies got infected with chalkbrood, bees went looking for resins more often. That’s where things get interesting because the adult bees doing the foraging are not directly affected by chalkbrood—it only lurks in larvae—so the “self”-medication happens at the level of colony instead of the individual bee. Honey bees, which are eusocial insects, really act together to benefit the entire colony rather than just themselves.

Image via Wikimedia Commons / Abalg

Read more at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=36183#.Uf0saNJTCSo

Substances in honey increase detoxification gene expression, team finds

Research in the wake of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious malady afflicting (primarily commercial) honey bees, suggests that pests, pathogens and pesticides all play a role. 

New research indicates that the honey bee diet influences the bees’ ability to withstand at least some of these assaults. Some components of the nectar and pollen grains bees collect to manufacture food to support the hive increase the expression of detoxification genes that help keep honey bees healthy. 

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

University of Illinois professor of entomology May Berenbaum, who led the study, said that many organisms use a group of enzymes called cytochrome P450 monooxygenases to break down foreign substances such as pesticides and compounds naturally found in plants, known as phytochemicals. However, honey bees have relatively few genes dedicated to this detoxification process compared to other insect species, she said. 

“Bees feed on hundreds of different types of nectar and pollen, and are potentially exposed to thousands of different types of phytochemicals, yet they only have one-third to one-half the inventory of enzymes that break down these toxins compared to other species,” Berenbaum said. 

Determining which of the 46 P450 genes in the honey bee genome are used to metabolize constituents of their natural diet and which are used to metabolize synthetic pesticides became a “tantalizing scientific question” to her research team, Berenbaum said. 

“Every frame of honey (in the honey bee hive) is phytochemically different from the next frame of honey because different nectars went in to make the honey. If you don’t know what your next meal is going to be, how does your detoxification system know which enzymes to upregulate?” Berenbaum said. 

Research had previously shown that eating honey turns on detoxification genes that metabolize the chemicals in honey, but the researchers wanted to identify the specific components responsible for this activity. To do this, they fed bees a mixture of sucrose and powdered sugar, called bee candy, and added different chemical components in extracts of honey. They identified p-coumaric acid as the strongest inducer of the detoxification genes. 

“We found that the perfect signal, p-coumaric acid, is in everything that bees eat – it’s the monomer that goes into the macromolecule called sporopollenin, which makes up the outer wall of pollen grains. It’s a great signal that tells their systems that food is coming in, and with that food, so are potential toxins,” Berenbaum said. 

Her team showed that p-coumaric acid turns on not only P450 genes, but representatives of every other type of detoxification gene in the genome. This signal can also turn on honey bee immunity genes that code for antimicrobial proteins. 

According to Berenbaum, three other honey constituents were effective inducers of these detoxification enzymes. These components probably originate in the tree resins that bees use to make propolis, the “bee glue” which lines all of the cells and seals cracks within a hive. 

“Propolis turns on immunity genes – it’s not just an antimicrobial caulk or glue. It may be medicinal, and in fact, people use it medicinally, too,” Berenbaum said. 

Many commercial beekeepers use honey substitutes such as high-fructose corn syrup or sugar water to feed their colonies. Berenbaum believes the new research shows that honey is “a rich source of biologically active materials that truly matter to a bee.” 

She hopes that future testing and development will yield honey substitutes that contain p-coumaric acid so beekeepers can enhance their bees’ ability to withstand pathogens and pesticides. 

Although she doesn’t recommend that beekeepers “rush out and dump p-coumaric acid into their high fructose corn syrup,” she hopes that her team’s research can be used as the basis of future work aimed at improving bee health. 

“If I were a beekeeper, I would at least try to give them some honey year-round,” Berenbaum said, “because if you look at the evolutionary history of Apis mellifera, this species did not evolve with high fructose corn syrup. It is clear that honey bees are highly adapted to consuming honey as part of their diet.”


Read more at http://scienceblog.com/65330/substances-in-honey-increase-detoxification-gene-expression-team-finds/#lQQFHftritFxzZwm.99

Rakyat disaran rebut peluang industri lebah - Ismail Sabri

ISMAIL Sabri Yaakob (dua dari kanan) dan Mustafa Kamal Baharuddin (tiga dari kanan) melihat kaedah mengeluarkan madu dari sarang lebah ketika melawat gerai jualan di Pusat Pertanian Parit Botak, Batu Pahat, Johor, semalam. - BERNAMA

BATU PAHAT 27 Jun - Kementerian Pertanian dan Industri Asas Tani menyarankan masyarakat dan usahawan tani supaya menceburi industri lebah bagi mengurangkan jumlah import madu.

Menterinya, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob berkata, rakyat perlu merebut peluang untuk melabur dalam industri berkenaan kerana permintaannya semakin meningkat apabila setiap produk kesihatan, perubatan dan kosmetik menggunakan madu lebah.

Menurutnya, bagi memenuhi permintaan madu sebelum ini, negara perlu mengimportnya dari China, New Zealand dan Australia dengan nilai mencecah RM27 juta pada 2010 dan jumlah itu dijangka melonjakkan sehingga RM50 juta pada tahun ini.

"Sebab itu, kerajaan mahu rakyat menceburi industri lebah supaya mereka dapat menikmati hasilnya yang bukan sahaja daripada madu, sebaliknya produk hiliran yang turut mendapat permintaan tinggi.

"Untuk menarik minat rakyat, kementerian akan menyediakan satu pakej khas yang terdiri daripada latihan, pinjaman, sumbangan peralatan dan pemasaran produk di dalam dan luar nagara," katanya selepas merasmikan Hari Ladang Lebah di Pusat Pertanian Parit Botak, di sini hari ini.

Yang turut hadir ialah Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Pertanian dan Industri Asas Tani negeri, Ismail Mohamed dan Ketua Pengarah Pertanian, Datuk Mustafa Kamal Baharuddin.

Ismail Sabri berkata, pihaknya juga akan melakukan perbincangan dengan Agro Bank dan Tabung Ekonomi Kumpulan Usaha Niaga (TEKUN) untuk menyediakan pinjaman kepada usahawan lebah yang baharu.

Beliau memberitahu, bagi melahirkan usahawan baharu itu, Jabatan Pertanian ditugaskan untuk menyemai minat masyarakat terhadap bidang berkenaan.

"Jabatan Pertanian akan membuat kajian tentang minat usahawan baharu. Malah, mereka juga perlu membuat tinjauan bagi memperbesarkan lagi industri yang dijalankan usahawan sedia ada.

"Pada masa akan datang, kementerian akan menghantar pegawai Jabatan Pertanian untuk mengikuti kursus di negara pengeksport madu lebah supaya kita juga mahir dalam industri tersebut," katanya.

Artikel Penuh: http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/Dalam_Negeri/20130628/dn_08/Rakyat-disaran-rebut-peluang-industri-lebah---Ismail-Sabri#ixzz2Yw4mEct9
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