Firefly Season

Just had my first firefly encounter this season and was instantly reminded of that great NY Times article published a few years ago: Blink Twice If You Like Me.  In it, Carl Zimmer highlights research on flash patterns and mating rituals done by Dr. Sara Lewis, an evolutionary ecologist at Tufts University. I highly recommend reading or re-reading it.

Fun fact to remember: Fireflies flashing in the air are all males. The females sit down in the grass observing, looking for flash patterns of males of their own species. They will sometimes respond with a single flash of their own, always at a precise interval after the male’s.

The Bread Code

Did you know that the colors of the tie tags on loaves of bread represent the day of the week on which it was baked? They do. I just found out. I can't believe I've gone my whole life not knowing this. Paul Michael, from Wise Bread, suggests an easy way to remember the color code: "Recall the alphabet. The colors run in alphabetical order, so the earlier they appear in the alphabet, the earlier in the week the bread was baked."

This system originated to help supermarkets and grocers quickly distinguish which bread was new, which was ready for a sale tag, and which had expired and can no longer be sold. You shouldn't see more than two or three tag colors on the shelves at once unless a specific bread maker is using their own system that includes "sell by" dates on the tags. Read more about the bread code here and here.

Love 'em or hate 'em, they are great for the Chesapeake

I highly recommend that our readers spend a few minutes with Charles Cohen's recent article in Urbanite about the state of oyster farming in Maryland waters: Betting on the Half Shell.

Earlier in the week, I attended a lecture on the ecological and industry benefits of oyster economics given by Dr. Douglas W. Lipton, Associate Professor and Program Leader of Sea Grant and Sea Grant Extension Programs at the University of Maryland, and when I came across Cohen's article, which covered a large share of the topics he touched upon, I wondered if he wasn't in that classroom as well.

Here are some highlights:

• The Chesapeake Bay oyster (Crassostrea virginica) population is declining for several reasons including the usual suspects like over-fishing, habitat destruction, poor water quality and sediment run-off, as well as two diseases harmful only to oysters (i.e. not harmful to humans): Dermo and MSX.
• While Dermo (Perkinsus marinus) is a native pathogen, MSX is not and was brought in with pacific, non-native oysters.
• Restoration is important not only for your palette and the net income of watermen and profits to processors and related industries, but for water quality improvements, increased fishing benefits, and even waterfront property values.
• What is being done to aid in this restoration? Repletion. Basically, the state subsidizes the movement of baby oysters from one place - where they will grow slowly - to another place where the survivors of the move will flourish fast, clear up some of that murky water, and later be harvested. While this process seems to aid the waterman and the water, it is quite expensive and perhaps only justifiable if the oyster biomass is raised to near or above the level that provides maximum ecological benefits.

For more information, check out the video about oyster aquaculture below and tune in to: The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on February 24th, 2011.

Slow Season!

Warmest wishes and deepest apologies for the lack of posts lately. The holidays are a busy time of year around here! Please feel free to spend some of your Internet-browsing hours looking through old posts here on Just Saying or on the following sites/blogs/links/stories that have captured our attention lately:

Mental_Floss: 18 Fun Facts About Your Favorite Christmas TV Specials

MSN 'A Year of Mystery Meat' - Read about the experiences of a Chicago area public school employee who ate school lunch every day for a year

Green-Up Your Computer with ECO BUTTON

Recent GMO News - Bt Cotton Failures in India (also here)

Get to know The Fabulous Beekman Boys or just watch Farmer John's Goat Cam!

And if those happy Beekman goats made your heart grow three sizes, consider making an end-of-year donation to one of our favorite organizations, Heifer International, to gift a goat or a share of one. Learn more and donate here.

Mistletoe

While finding yourself beneath mistletoe in North America during the holiday season traditionally implies luck and increases your chances at stealing a smooch, the trees that the partially-parasitic Phoradendron flavescens are commonly found growing from are not so lucky.

Botanically speaking, the plant is a 'hemiparasite,' which means that it is capable of producing its own food by photosynthesis, but more often it sends out roots to penetrate the branches or trunk of a tree and steal nutrients. The seed is spread by bird droppings in the crown of trees and because mistletoe is an evergreen, like Christmas holly, it is most visible in the winter when the leaves of host trees have fallen. Perhaps most interestingly, the familiar Christmas decor is often "harvested" by shotgun. How romantic.

So how did a parasite become a symbol and tradition during holiday festivities? I don’t know for certain, but some say the answer lies in Norse Mythology. In ancient Scandinavia, if enemies met by chance beneath mistletoe in the forest, they would lay down their arms and hold a truce until the next day. This custom went hand-in-hand with the Norse myth or Baldur, whose mother, Frigga, made every object, animal and plant promise not to harm her son except mistletoe, which she overlooked. After a mischievous Norse god killed Baldur with a spear fashioned from mistletoe and brought winter into the world, his mother declared the plant sacred. Baldur was eventually resurrected and Frigga ordered that any two people passing beneath it must celebrate Baldur’s life by kissing.

More recently, Washington Irving wrote about a now often-overlooked aspect of the mistletoe tradition in a footnote of “Christmas Eve”

“The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.”

Those berries, by the way, are poisonous despite the fact that they have long been considered an aphrodisiac.

So if you find yourself beneath a parasitic plant this season, think of traditions of peace and the tree that is now free of a nutrient-thief. Or, if you need an exit strategy, distract the smoocher by spewing the fun facts you’ve just learned!

Apples to Apples

Ever wonder why some apple varieties are quicker to go brown once sliced than others? It's got to do with varying PPO (polyphenoloxidase) levels. Horticulture professor at Cornell University, Susan K. Brown and NY Times Science writier C. Claiborne Ray explained the brown apple phenomenom in this week's Q&A:

Cutting an apple releases compounds from within cells that interact with oxygen in the air in a process called oxidation, said Susan K. Brown, professor in the department of horticulture at Cornell University.

“The browning is primarily because of a chemical reaction catalyzed by an enzyme called polyphenoloxidase, or PPO,” she said. Phenolic (nutritional) compounds in the fruit are oxidized into slightly colored compounds, called quinones, which then change to form darkly colored pigments, she said.

“Different apple cultivars vary widely in their PPO levels, total phenolic content and rates of browning,” Dr. Brown said. A variety may have less browning because of low PPO, low phenolics or some combination of the two.

Many popular cultivars, like McIntosh and Fuji, are fairly prone to browning, she said, but Cornell has developed some varieties that brown much less than most on the market. Other factors affecting the rate of browning include the ripening stage of the fruit, the length of time in storage and any topical treatments that have been applied.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

Before we dive into our suggestions for your holiday menu, we thought we'd post a few factoids about the belly-swelling feast we Americans will be celebrating this Thursday. Special thanks to Discovery (for the video above) and the U.S. Census Bureau for their "Facts for Features" Thanksgiving data.

•  242 million turkeys were expected to be raised in the United States in 2010. This number is actually down two percent from the number raised during 2009 (which together weighed 7.1 billion pounds and were valued at $3.6 billion).
• Where do all these turkeys come from? 47 million from Minnesota, 31 million from North Carolina, 28 million from Arkansas, 17.5 million from Missouri, 16 million from Indiana, and 15.5 million from Virginia. And that only accounts for about two-thirds of this years U.S. turkey production.
• Last year (2009). 1.9 billion pounds of sweet potatoes were produced in the U.S.
• 2.2 billion bushels of wheat were produced in the U.S. in 2010, mostly from North Dakota and Kansas.
• We trade turkeys. $7.3 million big ones worth of U.S. imports of live turkeys from January through July of 2010 — 99.1 percent from Canada.
• In 2007, the average American consumed 13.8 pounds of turkey.

Somewhat Topical

A few articles from earlier in the year that just surfaced and since blog = web + log and most of our readers are friends and family... I am logging my newly discovered web creds here for your reading enjoyment and my record-keeping.

How to Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally

Home Detox Strategy

First Day Factoids

Today was the first day of school for students throughout the state of Maryland and this blogger was no exception. In an effort to get some street credit in the field we've all been learning about together here on the blog, I enrolled in the Institute of Applied Agriculture at the University of Maryland, College Park, and had a wonderful first day on campus today. In the spirit of spreading the love, here are some fun factoids I brought home:

• 98% of biomass on the earth is plants.
• 60% of the pharmaceuticals we use today are phytoderivative (from plants).
• Wood/timber is a $41 billion industry in the U.S.
• One acre of trees moves six tons of CO2 and produces four tons of oxygen.
• An important ingredient in Aspirin called Salicylic Acid comes from willow.
• Carbon Dioxide concentrations are highest during the winter. (I guess this one is sort of obvious, huh?)
• It takes 10 lbs of corn to produce a single pound of beef.
• It takes 4.5 lbs of corn to produce a single pound of pork.
• Corn holds the biggest market share of any crop in the U.S.
• In the early 1900s, one in ten people were directly involved in agriculture. Today the ratio is one in 140.
• The first records of agriculture (think drawings on cave walls) date back to 8,000BC.

Penguin Party!

January 20th is National Penguin Awareness Day! In honor of our flightless, flippered friends, JustSaying invites you to waste a solid hour of company time looking at pictures and videos of these little fellas. Here are some fun facts and photos to get you started:

• Penguins can swim at up to 15 miles per hour!
  
• The distinctive markings of penguins is no accident. The white underside and a dark upper-side is camouflage against predators - from above or below sea level.
  
• Penguins are very social animals, breeding in groups or in large noisy colonies called rookeries. After mating on shore in the spring - almost always with the same partner- female penguins lay one or two eggs (although usually only one chick is reared). Please watch March of the Penguins for a deeper understanding of penguins love, life and rookeries.
  
• Penguins are found in the Southern Hemisphere. The greatest number is found on the coasts of Antarctica and on the subantarctic islands. Some penguin species live as far north as the Galapagos Islands on the Equator and the subtropical coasts of South America, South Africa and Australia.

• That's right: Penguins don't only live on icebergs. They can be found in warm areas (like Humboldt Current along the western coast of South America and Benguela and Agulhas Currents around South Africa) but only because there are cold water currents there.
  
• Speaking of climate conditions, penguins are extremely sensitive to climate change and their greatest threat is global warming.
  
• Today's penguins face a number of other threats including: destruction of nesting habitats, competition with fishermen for fish and shrimp, and introduced predators (such as rats, dogs and foxes) which eat penguin eggs and young.
  
• Emperor penguins, who live on floating ice packs in Antarctica, can grow to be up to four feet in height and 80 pounds in weight.They are also the deepest diving penguins, capable of diving to depths of 1,700 feet! 

If you enjoy these seabirds as much as I do and want to help, consider adopting one or two through the World Wildlife Fund. (Note: This is a symbolic adoption. You will not actually be recieving a little penguin pet in a WWF box. So just saying... don't waste the vacation day waiting for him/her.)

Cookie Monster to become Veggie Monster?

Last weekend, my little sister mentioned that the googly-eyed glutton on Sesame Street may be using his celebrity to fight the childhood obesity epidemic by trading in those chocolate chips for healthy servings of fruits and vegetables. As lovely - albeit drastic - as an idea as this is, it is not actually happening. Turns out, the rumor came about back in 2005 when producers decided to focus more strongly on sending positive health messages to their young viewers by adding segments about exercise and proper nutrition. Cookie Monster expanding his horizons to other food groups was just one part of the initiative.

PBS received letters and emails about the possible personality overhaul and an online petition even arose suggesting that folks boycott the "Veggie Monster" - but there was no such creature to protest. Can you picture the protestors on PBS's doorstep, though? Chanting: "C IS FOR COOKIE! THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!!!" stomping on bananas and snapping carrots over their knees? Too funny.

Anywho... Cookie Monster has since made appearances on the Today Show, Martha Stewart, and The Colbert Report to assure viewers that although he now enjoys an array of healthful snacks, cookies are still a part of his diet: "sometimes." The shift in the character's eating habits became a hot topic again last month when Sesame Street celebrated 40 years of programming (since November 10th 1969), making it the longest running children's program in television history.

So kudos to Sesame Street and their thoughtful initiatives. Cookie-lovers everywhere can calm down and rest assured that the Cookie Monster we know and love isn't going anywhere (thanks to a healthy, portion controlled, diverse diet).

Would ya look at that. Hmph.

New research from the University of Missouri: People are more likely to walk with a dog than walk with another person. You don't say! You mean to tell us that a human exercise partner, who can and (hopefully) does use the bathroom indoors, is less likely to motivate you to get outdoors regularly and consisently than say... a dog who needs to do his business outside in rain, sleet, heat or snow (regularly and consistently so help your carpets)?

This is headline news, folks. Tara Parker-Pope reports:

" ...people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion. In a 12-week study of 54 older adults at an assisted living home, 35 people were assigned to a walking program for five days a week, while the remaining 19 served as a control group. Among the walkers, 23 selected a friend or spouse to serve as a regular walking partner along a trail laid out near the home. Another 12 participants took a bus daily to a local animal shelter where they were assigned a dog to walk.

To the surprise of the researchers, the dog walkers showed a big improvement in fitness, while the human walkers began making excuses to skip the workout. Walking speed among the dog walkers increased by 28 percent, compared with just a 4 percent increase among the human walkers.

“What happened was nothing short of remarkable,” said Rebecca A. Johnson, a nursing professor and director of the Research Center for Human Animal Interaction at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “The improvement in walking speed means their confidence in their walking ability had increased and their balance had increased. To have a 28 percent improvement in walking speed is mind boggling.”

Ms. Johnson said that because some people are afraid of dogs, the participants were given the choice of walking with a human or a dog as the companion. Ms. Johnson said the dog walkers were far more consistent in sticking with the program than those who were walking with humans.

“In the human walking group, they were regularly discouraging each other from walking,” she said. “Missouri is a hot state. We would hear them saying: ‘It’s hot today. I don’t want to walk, do you?’ ”

The response from participants in the dog-walking group — and their dog companions — was very different.

“When the people came to the animal shelter, they bounced off the bus and said, ‘Where’s my dog?”’ Ms. Johnson said. “And the dogs never gave any discouragement from walking... "

Nothing short of remarkable?? Oy. Check out the full post here. The reader comments are pretty funny.

Happy HFCS Consuming!

Not sure I can top last year's Trick or Trivia Halloween factoid but here goes...

Halloween candy sales average about $2 billion per year here in the United States, which ranks the holiday ahead of Christmas and Easter for candy consumption. And even more disturbing, in 2007 Americans each consumed an average of 24.5 pounds of candy (Sources: Current Industrial Reports, Confectionery; U.S. Census). That's a lot of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Calories Per Dollar

During his talk on Saturday night, Michael Pollan addressed the frustrating reality that folks in lower income areas are often lured into Fast Food chains not only by those toys in the kids meals, but for their incredibly low cost "meal" deals. Specifically: The Dollar Menu.

Ever wonder how many calories you're getting for that dollar? Or avoiding the painful truth about how many calories you're getting for that dollar? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you may want to check out what finance writer Mark Gimein and the TBM staff have put together:

"The overall winner in our survey in the Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Personal Pan Pizza, at a price of $4.09 for 890 calories. Prices do vary somewhat: We sighted the same pizza at $4.59 at a second Pizza Hut, which would put it only in the middle of the pack. A number of choices cluster below that in the 200-calories-per-dollar range. Burger King's (BKC) Double Whopper stands out. It's basically tied for the No. 2 spot with Taco Bell's Fiesta Taco Salad but clobbers it in the protein count with 53 grams.

The good old Big Mac is a mediocre deal. It's got what by contemporary standards is a very modest 540 calories, putting it closer to Subway's Footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich from the chain's low-cal menu than to many other options. In fact, you can have a sit-down meal with IHOP's 1,535-calorie chicken fried steak and eggs and do about as well as with the Big Mac."

Full article and larger image can be found here.

Longest jellyfish on record: 160 feet

I'm undecided as to whether or not I want to blog while on vacation -something to think about poolside I guess. Until I decide, check out this fun site I learned about via Mental Floss magazine.

http://www.amazingfactgenerator.com/

Did you know that you shouldn't tease the jaws of a Venus flytrap beacause each jaw can only close a few times before dying? And the title fact about the jellyfish? And that most hoofed herbivores (from horses to giraffes) sleep standing up? Amazing facts here, folks. Amazing.