Eideard

Always good for what ails you.

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Scientists are reporting an in-depth analysis of how the caffeine in coffee, tea, and other foods seems to protect against conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease on the most fundamental levels. The report, which describes the chemistry behind caffeine’s antioxidant effects, appears in ACS’ The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Annia Galano and Jorge Rafael León-Carmona describe evidence suggesting that coffee is one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants in the average person’s diet. Some of the newest research points to caffeine (also present in tea, cocoa, and other foods) as the source of powerful antioxidant effects that may help protect people from Alzheimer’s and other diseases. However, scientists know little about exactly how caffeine works in scavenging the so-called free radicals that have damaging effects in the body. And those few studies sometimes have reached contradictory conclusions.

In an effort to bolster scientific knowledge about caffeine, they present detailed theoretical calculations on caffeine’s interactions with free radicals. Their theoretical conclusions show “excellent” consistency with the results that other scientists have report from animal and other experiments, bolstering the likelihood that caffeine is, indeed, a source of healthful antioxidant activity in coffee.

Any test that says I should continue drinking moderate amounts of coffee every day is OK with me.

Millions of office workers may be arriving at their desks earlier than ever to impress their bosses during these tough economic times, but it would appear most are not actually doing any work.

The first 31 minutes of every worker’s day is spent gossiping, drinking coffee, debating last night’s television and reading the paper, rather than actually turning on his or her computer and doing anything constructive, according to a survey.

The time wasted equates to a paid day off every three weeks – or 16 extra holiday days a year, the survey for officebroker, an online commercial property broker, estimated.

Many of the office workers appear keen and dedicated by eating their breakfast at their desk, giving the impression that getting to their place of work early is more important than precious time at home with their families.

But this is just a ruse, the study suggested. More than nine out of ten workers admitted they got down to work later than their contracted starting time. More than a third, 37 per cent, of those surveyed said they regularly ate at their desks before starting work.

Other popular activities that office workers undertake to warm themselves before earning money for their employer included logging onto Facebook or other social networking sites and reading newspapers’ websites.

Official statistics suggest that these delaying tactics may, in fact, help workers warm up before undertaking a very productive day. The Office for National Statistics has indicated that productivity per worker – the amount of GDP created by each person in employment – has increased following the recession, as fewer workers left in employment undertake more tasks at each company.

Whining about newspaper reading seems especially counter-productive. If you’re in any sort of position requiring interaction with the local public, knowing what is going on in the region is useful as all get-out.

I convinced the boss at the last construction company I worked for to get a subscription delivered to the office early every morning. It was there waiting for me when I opened the office. I read it while having my first coffee and always found a few leads. In any case, I had a better idea of what was going on in the community than competitors who simply relied on local radio or television.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8304062/31-minutes-at-office-before-we-start-working.html

“What’s that behind us?”

A United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany was diverted to Toronto’s Pearson Airport late Monday night after the pilot spilled a coffee, Transport Canada reports.

The coffee interfered with the plane’s navigation and communication system and sent out distress signals including code 7500 — unlawful interference, or a hijacking — and code 7600, which means the plane has lost communications.

“With the help of their company dispatch staff, the flight crew was confirmed the problem to be a NAV(navigation)/communication issue and not a valid code 7500. The flight crew initially diverted to return to Chicago but subsequently declared an emergency … and diverted to Toronto…”

A United spokesman told CNN a review is underway and it was too soon to comment on what happened.

Everyone’s just happy that Homeland Insecurity didn’t order them to be shot down.

Logging in, this morning, from my favorite coffee shop in Santa Fe.

Santa Fe has been my home since the 1980′s – and if you’re wandering around the South Side of Santa Fe, Java Joe’s is the place to drop in for a coffee and a carb and free wifi.

Enough of a commercial, time for me to carry on with my day.

There are over 15,000 Starbucks in the world but none like the one at 328 15th Avenue East in Seattle.

Officially the coffee shop is called “15th Ave Coffee and Tea” but the store and a similar sister location have earned another name: “the Stealth Starbucks.”

At first glance the coffee shops in the mega-chain’s hometown of Seattle do not even look like Starbucks…

The only hint that the store is owned by the coffee giant and not a local java seller is the “Inspired by Starbucks” lettering across the front door

Inside, pages from Plato’s dialogues decorate an entire wall, sweeteners sit on a bathtub converted into a table, beer and wine are for sale and employees dole out customized drip coffees along with advice on which are the best beans.

At every turn, the message seems to be here “it’s about the coffee…”

If customers enjoy the “stealth” Starbucks experience without linking it immediately to the coffee giant that’s fine with the creators of the concept, said Arthur Rubinfeld, Starbucks’ president of global development.

“These are learning environments for us to be innovative and push the envelope, Starbucks customers worldwide have come to expect a certain amount of offerings and timing in our stores we wanted to change things up here but didn’t want to disappoint any of our customers,” Rubinfeld…

According to Arthur Rubinfeld the “stealth” stores are not a departure from the brand but an effort to get back to the basics of the successful product that launched the company from a small single location coffee shop to a worldwide phenomenon.

Prototyping is a useful tool in a lot of businesses. At retail – you had better consider the context of the test as well.

A pea-sized seahorse, the world’s longest insect, a “ghost slug” and the world’s smallest snake were among the top 10 species discovered in 2008. These unusual critters were among thousands of species found last year, many in remote or tropical regions of the planet, that hint at the breadth of the Earth’s undiscovered biodiversity.

“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list.

“We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted,” Wheeler added.

The ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists — scientists devoted to species exploration and classification — compile the top 10 list of new species each year.

Also on the 2008 list are a caffeine-free coffee plant, a snail whose shell twists around four axes, a palm that flowers itself to death and microscopic bacteria that live in hairspray.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tongue of the chief coffee taster for a worldwide chain of coffee shops has been insured for £10m ($13.95m).

Gennaro Pelliccia personally tastes a sample of each batch of raw coffee beans at its London plant before they are roasted and shipped to its stores. “My 18 years of experience enable me to distinguish between thousands of flavours,” he says…

“The taste buds of a Master of Coffee are as important as the vocal cords of a singer or the legs of a top model, and this is one of the biggest single insurance policies taken out for one person,” said a spokesman for Lloyd’s broker Glencairn Limited, which arranged the insurance cover.

Is there a comparable expert at condom factories?

In research that touches on two of Americans’ great obsessions — coffee and cars — scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno, have made diesel fuel from used coffee grounds. The technique is not difficult and there is so much coffee around that several hundred million gallons of biodiesel could potentially be made annually.

Dr. Mano Misra, a professor of engineering who conducted the research with Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta K. Mohapatra, said it was by accident that he realized coffee beans contained a significant amount of oil. “I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it,” he said. “The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it.” He and his team thought there might be a useful amount of oil in used grounds, so they went to several Starbucks stores and picked up about 50 pounds of them.

Analysis showed that even the grounds contained about 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The researchers then used standard chemistry techniques to extract the oil and convert it to biodiesel. The processes are not particularly energy intensive, Misra said, and the researchers estimated that biodiesel could be produced for about a dollar a gallon.

Even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. “It won’t solve the world’s energy problem,” Misra said of his work. “But our objective is to take waste material and convert it to fuel.” And biodiesel made from grounds has one other advantage, he said: the exhaust smells like coffee.

Perish the thought we decide to run our economy more sensibly. It’s called recycling, folks. There is a small percentage of people who learned about this decades ago.

Our politicians in all their wisdom decided it was unimportant. Maybe we should recycle the politicians into jobs they’re better suited for?

A Chicago police officer has been suspended for 15 months for demanding free coffee and baked goods from six different Starbucks.

Chicago police officer Barbara Nevers apparently had a taste for Starbucks, especially the free kind.

The Police Board ruled in May that 55-year-old Nevers intimidated Starbucks employees by screaming at them and flashing her badge, handcuffs or gun when they wanted her to pay.

Officer Barbara Nevers, a 14-year veteran, has also been ordered to undergo counseling.

Counseling is the least of it. I hope they don’t put a gun back in her hands for a spell.