Hold your nose and drink up -- this old folk remedy really works! Drinking a little apple cider vinegar each day helps keep skin supple, break down fat, and makes it easier for your body to digest food properly. A daily dose in water also helps keep down your blood pressure. If you just can't bring yourself to drink it, try mixing it with apple juice or honey first.
The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian Europe, as in the Celtic celebration of Beltane, and the Walpurgis Night of the Germanic countries. Many pre-Christian indigenous celebrations were eventually banned or Christianized during the process of Christianization in Europe. As a result, a more secular version of the holiday continued to be observed in the schools and churches of Europe well into the 20th century. In this form, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the Maypole and crowning of the Queen of the May. Today various Neopagan groups celebrate reconstructed (to varying degrees) versions of these customs on 1 May.
The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer. In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is observed as Mary's month, and in these circles May Day is usually a celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this connection, in works of art, school skits, and so forth, Mary's head will often be adorned with flowers. Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the giving of "May baskets," small baskets of sweets and/or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbors' doorsteps.The maypole is a tall wooden pole (traditionally of maple (Acer), hawthorn or birch), sometimes erected with several long coloured ribbons suspended from the top, festooned with flowers, draped in greenery and strapped with large circular wreaths, depending on local and regional variances. What is often thought of as the "traditional" English/British maypole (a somewhat shorter, plainer version of the Scandinavian pole with ribbons tied at the top and hanging to the ground) is a relatively recent development of the tradition and is probably derived from the picturesque, Italianate dances performed in mid-19th century theatricals. It is usually this shorter, plainer maypole that people (usually school children) perform dances around, weaving the ribbons in and out to create striking patterns.
With roots in Germanic paganism, the maypole traditionally appears in most Germanic countries, Germanic country-bordering and countries invaded by Germanic tribes after the fall of the Roman Empire (like Spain, France and Italy), but most popularly in Germany, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Finland in modern times for Spring, May Day, Beltane and Midsummer festivities and rites.
The Maibaum or Maypole in Laaber..It seems bumblebees can discover how to "rob" flowers of nectar, scientists now reveal.
Normally bumblebees crawl into flowers to get a nectar. In return for this sweet treat, blossoms coat the insects in pollen, which contains plant sperm. When these bees rendezvous with other flowers, they serve as couriers of this pollen, helping the plants breed.
However, bees can bite through the base of a flower to suck up nectar instead, avoiding the pollen altogether. Since they get something for nothing this way - drinking nectar without helping the flowers mate - such behavior can be seen as theft. The bees may commit such an act to get nectar from blossoms they could not fit into, or just to get more nectar than possible by normal means.
Now it appears that bumblebees can quickly learn how to rob flowers if they visit blossoms that others have already burglarized. The bees could learn how to commit such theft by themselves, but this was rare. But, after one bee learned how to rob nectar by watching its comrades, the skill rapidly spread to other bees.
It was long known that bees could learn simple facts from each other - such as where food is, for instance - but the discovery that insects can learn skills from others is a first.
"It was actually first suggested in one of Darwin's journals. He saw bumblebees robbing flowers in a garden one day, and saw honeybees doing something similar afterward," said researcher Ellouise Leadbeater, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary, University of London. "That led us to our work."
The brains of bumblebees are a little larger than 1 cubic millimeter in size, or nearly one-millionth the size of a human brain.
"It's interesting to see what you can do with a small brain," Leadbeater told LiveScience. "But then again, it may be that you just don't need to be very clever to learn a simple technique like this."
In the future, research could see if bumblebees could teach other species of bees how to rob nectar. Other insects that could learn skills from within or outside their species might include ants, Leadbeater speculated.
Leadbeater and her colleague Lars Chittka detailed their findings online April 23 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
There are four engineers traveling in a car; a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an electrical engineer and a computer engineer. The car breaks down.
"Sounds to me as if the pistons have seized. We'll have to strip down the engine before we can get the car working again", says the mechanical engineer.
"Well", says the chemical engineer, "it sounded to me as if the fuel might be contaminated. I think we should clear out the fuel system."
"I thought it might be an grounding problem", says the electrical engineer, "or maybe a faulty plug lead."
They all turn to the computer engineer who has said nothing and say: "Well, what do you think?"
"Ummm, perhaps if we all get out of the car and get back in again?"
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- U.S. conservationists said they're studying musk ox to determine how the relics of the Ice Age may be affected by climate change.
The Wildlife Conservation Society -- working with the National Park Service, U. S. Geological Survey and Alaska Fish and Game -- has equipped six musk ox with GPS collars as part of a four-year study to determine the extent to which weather, disease and predation may be driving populations, the WCS said Friday in a release.
"Musk ox are a throwback to our Pleistocene heritage and once shared the landscape with mammoths, wild horses and sabered cats," study leader Joel Berger, a professor at the University of Montana, said in a statement. "They may also help scientists understand how arctic species can or cannot adapt to climate change."
“Sponsored post. All opinions are mine.” I can't imagine that weekend is almost ending! And yes, it is the last weekend of the Janu...
