Well | Jotup

Most bees don’t die after stinging – and other surprising bee facts

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Well, Bee, Stinger, Ant, Male, Anatomy, Attitude, Sting, Death, Skin, Honey, Apis, Animal, Wasp

But maybe we also felt a tinge of regret, or vindication, knowing the offending bee will die.

Key Points:

But maybe we also felt a tinge of regret, or vindication, knowing the offending bee will die.
Only eight out of almost 21,000 bee species in the world die when they sting.
To understand the intricacies of bees and their stinging potential, we’re going to need to talk about the shape of stingers, bee genitals, and attitude.

Our beloved, and deadly, honey bees

Native to Europe and Africa, these bees are today found almost everywhere in the world.
They are one of eight honey bee species worldwide, with Apis bees representing just 0.04% of total bee species.
We could say they die for queen and colony, but the actual reason these bees die after stinging is because of their barbed stingers.
Beyond that, bees and wasps (probably mostly European honey bees) are Australia’s deadliest venomous animals.

So what is a stinger?

A stinger, at least in most bees, wasps and ants, is actually a tube for laying eggs (ovipositor) that has also been adapted for violent defence. This group of stinging insects, the aculeate wasps (yes, bees and ants are technically a kind of wasp), have been stabbing away in self-defence for 190 million years. You could say it’s their defining feature.

The sting of the European honey bee is about as painful as a bee sting gets, scoring a 2 out of 4 on the Schmidt insect sting pain index.
On the flipside, most bee species can sting you as many times as they like because their stingers lack the barbs found in honey bees.

Can you tell who’s packing?

Globally, there are 537 species (about 2.6% of all bee species) of “stingless bees” in the tribe Meliponini. We have only 11 of these species (in the genera Austroplebeia and Tetragonula) in Australia. These peaceful little bees can also be kept in hives and make honey. Stingless bees can still defend their nests, when offended, by biting. But you might think of them more as a nuisance than a deadly stinging swarm.
Australia also has the only bee family (there are a total of seven families globally) that’s found on a single continent. This is the Stenotritidae family, which comprises 21 species. These gentle and gorgeous giants (14–19mm in length, up to twice as long as European honey bees) also get around without a functional stinger.
The astute reader might have realised something by this point in the article. If stingers are modified egg-laying tubes … what about the boys? Male bees, of all bee species, lack stingers and have, ahem, other anatomy instead. However, some male bees will still make a show of “stinging” if you try to grab them. Some male wasps can even do a bit of damage, though they have no venom to produce a sting.

Why is it always the honey bees?

So, if the majority of bees can sting, why is it always the European honey bee having a go?
First, the European honey bee is very abundant across much of the world.
So those hardworking European honey bees are really putting in the miles.

A complicated relationship

We have an interesting relationship with our European honey bees.
They can be deadly, are non-native (across much of the world), and will aggressively defend their nests.

Amy-Marie Gilpin receives funding from Western Sydney University and Horticulture Innovation Australia.
She is also a member of the IUCN Wild Bee Specialist Group Oceania.

How marketing classes can rescue ‘ugly produce’ from becoming food waste

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Steps, Well, Friends, Exercise, Learning, Environment, Recycling, Vegetable, Education, Research, Food, Table, Student, Love, Habit, Family, Marketing, Carleton University, Tutoring

At a time of rising food costs and growing food insecurity, a large percentage of food grown for consumption never reaches our tables.

Key Points:

At a time of rising food costs and growing food insecurity, a large percentage of food grown for consumption never reaches our tables.
This desire for cosmetically appealing food also extends to consumers, as we often prefer picture-perfect produce.

Showing ugly produce some love

A prominent example in the United States is Misfits Market, which launched in 2018.
By buying misshapen and ugly produce and reselling it at discount prices in subscription boxes, Misfits Market has grown into a billion-dollar business.
Despite such encouraging efforts, there’s still a lot of work to do on changing attitudes and behaviours to alleviate waste.

Steps towards change

RESCUER stands for the steps in the process of learning, action and change undertaken by students, and combines passive and active modes of learning.
We first engaged students with resources — “passive” forms of learning through lectures and curated readings on food waste, irregularly shaped produce and sustainable practices.
Throughout the process, students developed a greater cognizance of food waste, and these issues became more readily and consistently resonant when shopping.

Student comments

Well, students emerged with a much deeper understanding of food waste and an increase in responsible attitudes and behaviours.
This increase in responsibility is evident in the comments from students about RESCUER, including:
“I am cognizant of the negative effects that food abnormalities have on the environment due to food waste issues.
On that account, I will surely change some of my habits to match my perceived identity.
It revealed that students’ awareness, understanding and actions related to sustainability were all improved after having completed the exercise.

Educators can change attitudes

Overall, we’ve seen our RESCUER framework cultivate a shift towards responsible consumption, and it also situates marketing education within a sustainability narrative.
Ours is an example of how educators can play a crucial role in changing attitudes and actions, and in equipping future professionals with tools to tackle the challenges of sustainability.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Curious Kids: who makes the words? Who decides what things like ‘trees’ and ‘shoes’ are called?

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Well, Name, Wood, Language, Shoe, Human, Tree, Drinking, Alphabet song, Letter, Animal, Typesetting

Key Points:

Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria
Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria

Let’s start with the first part of the question: who makes words?
Well, there’s no official person or group that’s responsible for making words.
Mostly, it’s a matter of reusing words, or parts of words, and transforming them into new products.

Creating words out of ‘tree’ and ‘shoe’

One is to add things called “suffixes”, which are letters we add to the ends of words to change their meaning slightly.
It’s also possible to combine whole words to make new ones.
These types of words are called “compound words” — they are often written as two words (“apple tree”), but sometimes one (“shoelace”).
This is when we mix words together (sometimes they’re called “frankenwords”, itself a blend of “Frankenstein” and “word”).

Treerific (“tree” has been squished with “terrific” to convey something wonderful that is related to trees)
Shoenicorn (“shoe” has been squished with “unicorn” to mean an unicorn with magical shoes)

Words and parts of words can combine and recombine to create a never-ending number of new words.
We can also build words from the first letters of other words.
Finally, English is also a word pirate that steals words from other languages — more than 350 in fact.
This term for this is “borrowing” — curious, because English has no intention of ever giving these words back!

Early examples of trees and shoes

Okay, so what about the second part of the question: why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes?
Here’s a very early example of “tree” from an ancient poem written more than a thousand years ago.

This was spoken about 2,500 years ago, but unfortunately nothing survives of the language, or perhaps people weren’t into writing things down back then.
We can go even further back in time to the grandparent of English — a language called “Proto-Indo-European”.

The very beginning of trees and shoes

For centuries, people have wondered how words like “tree” and “shoe” were invented.
There are lots of ideas around, but we’ll never know for sure because people have been speaking for more than 30,000 years.
Remember what we could do earlier with just the two words “tree” and “shoe’!

Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Trust in the ECB – insights from the Consumer Expectations Survey

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

This article shows that trust in the ECB needs to be analysed and understood as a multifaceted concept. Analysis of data from the Consumer Expectations Survey shows that trust is not a matter of “yes” or “no”

Key Points:

This article shows that trust in the ECB needs to be analysed and understood as a multifaceted concept. Analysis of data from the Consumer Expectations Survey shows that trust is not a matter of “yes” or “no”

Donald Trump trial: why it took so long to select a jury and how the process is different to the UK

Retrieved on:

Friday, April 19, 2024

Well, Name, Bias, Stormy Daniels, Marital status, Radio, Lawyer, Trump

From this, more than half were dismissed after they claimed they could not be impartial.

Key Points:

From this, more than half were dismissed after they claimed they could not be impartial.
On day three, one of the selected jurors asked to stand down after she became concerned about her name becoming public.
Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence will also ask additional questions of the prospective jurors.
In some cases, Trump’s lawyers had even looked through old social media posts as grounds to exclude a juror.

How are jurors selected?

There are normally about 35 to 40 prospective jurors.
This process repeats until a group of about 14 (12 jurors and two alternative jurors) are selected.
Prospective jurors who have been summoned to the court are either questioned by the judge or by the prosecution and defence lawyers.
With jurors who favour guilty verdicts seeing prosecution evidence favourably and either distorting or ignoring the defence evidence – jurors who favour not guilty verdicts show the opposite pattern of results.
Therefore, some jurors will not be dismissed for cause despite being biased because they know how to answer in an acceptable way.

Scotland and England and Wales

In comparison, jurors in England and Wales and Scotland are selected to be summoned randomly from the electoral register.
The court clerk (England and Wales) or clerk of court (Scotland) will then empanel (or select) the jury by randomly selecting names from a ballot.

Lee John Curley receives funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust

Crucial building blocks of life on Earth can more easily form in outer space – new research

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Steps, Well, Solar System, Dicarboxylic acid, Membrane, Cell, Environment, Lipid, Peptide, Abiogenesis, DNA, Life, Protein, Carbon, Dust, Sugar, Organic, Genetic code, Carbon monoxide, Fine chemical

Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms.

Key Points:

Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms.
However, these complex molecules are assembled from a variety of small and simple molecules such as amino acids – the so-called building blocks of life.
This latest study sheds light on how some of these building blocks might have formed and assembled, and how they ended up on Earth.

Steps to life

Peptides can be made up of as little as two amino acids, but also range to hundreds of amino acids.
The assemblage of amino acids into peptides is an important step because peptides provide functions such as “catalysing”, or enhancing, reactions that are important to maintaining life.
However, despite their potentially important role in the origin of life, it was not so straightforward for peptides to form spontaneously under the environmental conditions on the early Earth.

Many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids, lipids and sugars can form in the space environment.
Because peptide formation is more efficient in space than on Earth, and because they can accumulate in comets, their impacts on the early Earth might have delivered loads that boosted the steps towards the origin of life on Earth.
So what does all this mean for our chances of finding alien life?
Once we know that, we’ll have a good idea of how widespread, or not, life might be.

Christian Schroeder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Template for a European Union herbal monograph

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Key Points:

Christine Lagarde, Luis de Guindos: Monetary policy statement (with Q&A)

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Stock market development and familiarity (language and distance) are considered key determinants for home bias.

Key Points:

Stock market development and familiarity (language and distance) are considered key determinants for home bias.
The literature neglects however that investors often invest in foreign funds domiciled in financial centers.

Drinking apple cider vinegar may help with weight loss but its health benefits are overstated

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

One day, she explained that she adds apple cider vinegar to improve my health.

Key Points:

One day, she explained that she adds apple cider vinegar to improve my health.
Apple cider vinegar is a natural product made of fermented apple juice that has gone sour.
I decided to turn medical sleuth and investigate whether apple cider vinegar is as good for health as it sounds.

Claim: disinfectant properties

But does apple cider vinegar’s decontaminant qualities translate to the human gut?
Our stomachs produce acid, which acts as a natural barrier to infection, so how can adding more acid help?

Claim: weight loss and management of type 2 diabetes

There are plenty of anecdotal claims that apple cider vinegar can aid weight loss, supported by limited evidence from several small studies.
Apple cider vinegar is thought to cause weight loss through its effect on delay of gastric emptying.
Reduced calorific intake will lead to weight loss – but how are the metabolic effects on blood glucose and lipids mediated?
In type 2 diabetes there is a reduction in sensitivity to insulin which in turn leads to a reduced uptake of glucose by cells.

Claim: reduces risk of heart disease

Raised blood lipids are a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction and stroke.
Well, I’m afraid there’s no scientific evidence that vinegar consumption of any kind reduces cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in those with or without diabetes.

Claim: cancer treatment and prevention

One of the more outrageous claims of benefits of daily apple cider vinegar consumption is that it may prevent or treat cancer.
A frequently quoted case-control study from China found that an increased consumption of vinegar was associated with a reduced incidence of oesophageal cancer.

Stephen Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Why moving to the right could be wrong for Dutton and the Coalition

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

When Peter Dutton took the Coalition reins in 2022 after a humiliating loss of office, his first priority was unity.

Key Points:

When Peter Dutton took the Coalition reins in 2022 after a humiliating loss of office, his first priority was unity.
A punchy and well-schooled parliamentarian, Dutton knew that if ever he was to contest the prime ministership, his primary challenge was to make it to the next election.
The alienation this policy creates among mainstream urban voters could more than offset its popularity in the joint party room (particularly within the anti-renewables Nationals).
They joined Warringah (NSW) on Sydney’s North Shore, lost spectacularly in 2019 to the original “teal”, Zali Steggall.
Read more:
Labor's unexpected Aston win is body blow for Dutton
The bad news has kept on coming.
That needless act, and the brash language justifying it, brought no interjection from Dutton.
It was an example of just the kind of braggadocio that could see even more Liberal women heading for the exits.

Mark Kenny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.