A few weeks ago we already wrote about the cold winter in Kunming. It wasn't just Yunnan's capital, though, that was suffering from the cold. Several coffee areas were also affected. According to the Pu'er government it concerns no less than 17,300 ha of coffee, 5,400 of which have been destroyed. It will take at least two years for the affected trees to recover from this cold spell. In order to assist the affected farmers as best as possible there have been several meetings with the Vice-Mayor and the Coffee Office. NAS agronomists have participated and contributed to these meetings, and have been developing training material for the farmers on how to manage the affected trees. Our findings on how to best deal with this issue were presented to the members of Pu'er Coffee Association and last, but definitely not least, we have done several field trips and training sessions in cooperation with Pu'er Coffee Office. Research at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore has shown there is good reason to believe that a moderate consumption of coffee enhances long-term memory storage in the brain. A group of volunteers were shown a series of everyday images. Half of them was given a pill with 200 mg of caffeine five minutes after the test, the other half got a placebo. The next day they were shown another series of images, some the same as those shown before, some new ones and some slightly different than those of the previous day. While there was hardly any difference between both groups in distinguishing between the new and old images, the group that got the caffeine pill was better at picking the images that were slightly different than those of the first viewing session. According to the researchers this shows that caffeine enhances the brain's capability for pattern separation, i.e. recognising the difference between two similar but not identical items. And though there is some doubt about the validity of these tests among other scientists, and the researchers do not know how caffeine helps the brain to store memories, a moderate consumption of coffee just might be able to help jog your memory.
Some time ago I came across an article about a perfume that smells like coffee. Turned out it was a limited edition, created by Macmillan Cancer Support for their fund-raising in September 2013. They created three different scents: Coffeelicious, Macpresso and Mochamorning. And though I can understand the idea behind this all, people love the smell of coffee, so why not make a coffee-scented perfume and aftershave, I'm still not too sure if I would like a coffee-scented aftershave. It just might make me crave for a cup of real coffee the whole day long.
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AuthorI wouldn't be surprised to find out I was born with a passion for coffee. For the life of me, I can't remember not loving coffee. And by that, I don't just mean drinking it, but everything involved from its cultivation over the processing to the final product that is my loyal companion throughout the day. Archives
February 2014
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