More Malus mayhem
I guess it’s the season. More apples today, again from both sides of the Atlantic. From Britain, an invitation to Apple Days at East Malling, a celebration which will feature the (troubled?) National Fruit Collection. ((Thanks to Danny for the tip.)) And from the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, more news of American apple breeding, featuring David Bedford of the University of Minnesota.
Roman antibiotics
Also from Tangled Bank comes news of a study looking at the evidence for various infectious diseases from the skeletons of people killed at Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. ((That’s the one that also destroyed Pompeii, though in a somewhat different way.)) Among the diseases was brucellosis, evidence for which was also gleaned from the carbonized cheeses found at the site. Herculaneum was apparently famous for its goat cheeses, which seem, however, to have been badly infected. Which is all amazing enough. But one of the commenters on the article points to another paper which adds a twist to the story.
It seems the inhabitants of Herculaneum, despite their brucellosis and tuberculosis, were relatively free of non-specific bone inflammations. And that may be because:
Pomegranates and figs, consumed by the population, were mainly dried and invariably contaminated by Streptomyces, a bacterium that produces natural tetracycline, an antibiotic.
Is there similar evidence from contemporary populations of the protection conferred by natural antibiotics?
Plucked from the Tangled Bank
The latest Tangled Bank (a blog carnival all about science) is up ((So, welcome anyone who arrived from there.)) with a couple of posts of potential interest to agriculture. Walking the Berkshires describes how to rationally decide how invasive a weed might be. And if you’re interested in pests and diseases, Discovering Biology in a Digital World will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the screwworm, one of my personal all-time favourites.
Bees older than agriculture?
A press release from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that scientists have uncovered the world’s oldest known bee hives, which date back around 11,500 years, at Tel Rehov in the Beath Shean valley.
The beehives there were found in the center of a built-up area there that has been excavated since 1997 by Dr. Nava Panitz-Cohen of the Hebrew University. Three rows of beehives were found in the apiary, containing more than 30 hives. It is estimated, however, based on excavations to date, that in all the total area would have contained some 100 beehives.
Beehives of very similar construction are apparently still in use in Arab villages in Israel and elsewhere around the Mediterranean.