It’s About Thyme, a Honeybee Protector

From a single symptom such as fever, it is impossible to diagnose a disease. Similarly, the opposite-leaf characteristic alone will not help anyone classify a plant. But throw in a stem with a square cross section, fragrant leaves and flowers with an upper and lower lip, and you probably have a member of the mint family.

This group of over 200 related genera includes about 7000 species. Of these, about 220 belong to the Thymus genus, or thyme. In all species, the stems and flower clusters also grow opposite of each other. Garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is a tough plant that grows well in well-drained soil. Its seeds ended up in gaps between my backyard uni stones, where they germinated and eventually flowered. After carefully lifting a stone or two, if one transplants a thyme plant with enough intact roots, in a month or two, a tiny plant will grow into a full one-foot bush with woody stems. If it’s at the end of a slope where a little water can accumulate, you might even get a plant growing with minimal soil.

But what rubs off on one’s fingers if a little pressure is applied to the leaves? It’s an oil rich in thymol, a phenol derivative. Phenol, which does not have any of the carbons attached to the hexagonal ring, was once used as an antiseptic.

Could thymol share some of those antibacterial properties?

To find out, some Brazilian researchers did not use thyme but they extracted oil of thymol from a different plant (Lippia sidoides). When heat-sensitive natural products have to be extracted, rather than boiling them directly, steam from a different flask is passed over the sample. It collects the extract and then passes it through a condenser. Finally the liquified mixture trickles into a collecting flask.

The oil not only contained thymol(57%) but an isomer known as carvacrol(17%) An assortment of other terpenoids made up the rest of the plant’s essential oil.
Their results suggested that  thymol and carvacrol have antibacterial activity against Streptococcus mutans, the primary species associated with the first stages of dental cavities.

The previous year other researchers investigated garden thyme’s essential oil to possess a wide range spectrum of fungicidal activity. The oil’s vapor exhibited long-lasting suppressive activity on molds from damp dwellings. It should be pointed out that although thyme’s oil also contains thymol(33%) and carvacrol (4%), its major component is the very similar, OH-less, para cymene(37%).

Other research reveals that thymol and origanum oil (has thymol and carvacrol) inhibit the growth of the honeybee’s two bacterial pathogens. This is interesting from an ecological perspective because the honeybee is thyme’s main pollinator.

More About Thyme:
1) an interesting link to an article about wild thyme and the distinct smells produced from different groups and how climate change has led phenolic types to show up unexpectedly in a basin in France. I like the quote,  “Mean values in ecology don’t mean a lot, what is important is the extreme values […] because you get extreme mortality events, and that is what causes natural selection” http://scienceintheclouds.blogspot.ca/2013/02/changing-thymes-plants-ada…

2) Caraway thyme(Thymus herba-barona) has a strong pleasant smell similar to caraway. Some species are susceptible to fungal diseases if over-watered. If not cut back after flowering , the plants become too woody.

Other Sources:

Antimicrobial activity of the essential oil from Lippia sidoides, carvacrol and thymol against oral pathogens.Braz J Med Biol Res, March 2007, Volume 40(3) 349-356

Letters in Applied Microbiology  Volume 44, Issue 1, pages 36–42, January 20073.

Journal of essential oil research : JEOR ISSN 1041-2905 Vol. No. v. 6(3) p. 279-287

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The Marriage of Art and Science

The need for a bridge between science and religion is overshadowed by the greater a need to have the arts and sciences coexist in harmony in our day- to-day existence. Both endeavors are made possible by leaps of imagination, and in principle, they should not be elitist and subservient to wealth. They should strive to improve the human condition and to free the world from hunger at all levels and to free it from the constraints of all isms, politics, and superstition.

Geosmin and linalool, molecular models of two pleasant smells superimposed over Henri Rousseau’s dream. Science accentuates the arts; there is no conflict among them, as is often assumed.

It is such a thought that inspired the following:

To his myopic eyes, light floods the gaps in the cathedral of leaves overhead, and the size of the spaces oscillates while the verdant mass loses the boundaries that artificial lens temporarily focused.

He is transported to a moment in his childhood when he stood on a picnic table in awe of such a tall tree.

Soon after, he entertains another pleasant thought, of leaf pigments absorbing photons, ejecting electrons and getting them back ultimately from water molecules, which split and create an energetic potential through proton gradients. And one of the eventual products of that process, hexanal, diffuses into the air, latches on to the right combination of nasal receptors and the signal unlocks more memories of crawling under a fence after being called in for lunch and having his face brush against the grass.

The time has come for a marriage between art and science..

Hydroelectricity: Quebec’s True Power

Among the world’s current ways of producing electricity on a large scale, hydroelectricity has the lowest impact on the environment and is technologically the most efficient. Forty percent of Canada’s freshwater is within the borders of the province of Quebec, where 4500 rivers flow. It is mainly because of Quebec that Canada is the world’s second largest producer of hydroelectric power. The province has an installed capacity of 35 gigawatts, accounting for 39% of Canada’s total. On a per capita basis, Quebec’s capacity is 4430 W and the country’s is 2620 W.  In contrast, the capacity of China, the world’s largest hydro producer in the world, is 150 W per capita and that of the U.S. is 240 W.
To put these numbers in perspective, the average electricity consumption of a U.S. family of four is in the neighborhood of 50 kWh per day. 50 kWh/day/4 capita= 50 kWh * 3 600 000 J/(24h*3600 s/h/4 capita)  = 521 W/capita.
A few years ago, a colleague and I brought our students to the Beauharnois power plant, which is just off the southwest tip of the island of Montreal. With figures from our guides, I realized how efficient hydroelectric plants are. They mentioned that the volume of 3 Olympic-sized pools flows through its turbines every second and that there is a 24 meter height difference between the turbine’s water input and output. After looking up the size of an Olympic pool and using E= mgh, I estimated the water’s potential energy. They mentioned that the 38 units in the kilometer wide operation generate about 1911 MW of power, so I calculated 90% efficiency. Some research revealed that the efficiency of  hydro-generating stations is indeed somewhere between 90 and 95 %.
When we got a close look at the large rods connecting the turbine and generators, and we removed our jackets, it was obvious that the small percentage of heat loss is still a lot of energy. It comes from copper and magnetic losses that result from the large currents induced in the stator’s coils and from  the continuous movement of the rotor’s particles in the changing magnetic fields, respectively. They don’t have to worry about heating the premises in winter, but the 40 ^o C and above  internal temperature in the summer leads to short shifts for the employees.
Quebec all out commitment to the James Bay project, which included building the world’s 8th largest facility, led to environmental and native land issues. Flooding of large areas of land introduced mercury into rivers. Bioaccumulation then led to elevated concentrations of the toxic metal in fish and potentially in humans. When consumed by humans regularly, mercury(Hg) messes up the tertiary and quaternary structures of important proteins in the nervous system. The Mercury Agreement between the Crees and the Quebec government ensured constant Hg-monitoring and set the goal of restoring fisheries in the area.

But once hydro generators operate, they emit comparatively little greenhouse gases, and no SO_X or NO_X. After the James Bay project was completed, most homes in large cities like Montreal and Quebec, have switched from heating oil and natural gas to electricity. Even at that, the nationalized power company, Hydro Quebec has been able to sell surplus power to the states of New York and Vermont.

With one hockey team having moved to Colorado; the other not having won a Stanley Cup in 21 years and with separatist sentiment waning perennially,  true power in Quebec lies in  hydroelectricity.