LE JARDIN MERVEILLEUX DES EPICES - La noix de muscade, l'épice au parfum envoûtant

Au Moyen-Âge, on disait que conserver une noix de muscade dans la poche pouvait préserver de la maladie. Aujourd'hui, on utilise cette épice râpée pour aromatiser les plats. Et quand approche Noël, ses saveurs de poivre et de cannelle, subtilement sucrées, nous enveloppent d'une chaude douceur.

Consommer de la noix de muscade aiderait à atténuer les troubles digestifs, à consolider la densité osseuse, à lutter contre le stress ou encore contre l'anémie. Elle soulagerait aussi les affections respiratoires. Mais comme son cousin, le macis, la noix de muscade, à fortes doses, a des effets psychotropes importants. 

© gokalpiscan/Frantisek_Krejci/Rmiss, Pixabay, CC0 Creative Commons

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ASTRONOMY - NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe

 2024 February 1

NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe
Image Credit & Copyright: Processing - Jean-Baptiste Auroux, Data - Mike Selby

Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the faint but heated constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of the galaxy's central bar and along its spiral arms. Seen in fine detail, obscuring dust lanes cut across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.

LE JARDIN MERVEILLEUX DES EPICES - Le gingembre, une plante médicinale ancienne

Le gingembre est une plante originaire d'Inde. En cuisine, on apprécie son rhizome pour son goût poivré et citronné. Délicieusement piquant aussi. Le gingembre sec apparaissant plus corsé et exhalant des arômes plus chauds.

Le gingembre est bien sûr très connu pour ses vertus aphrodisiaques. Mais il figure aussi parmi les plus anciennes plantes médicinales. On lui prête ainsi des propriétés anti-inflammatoires. Il aiderait aussi à soulager les nausées, le mal des transports et les douleurs dentaires. Il favoriserait enfin la digestion. 

© Luis Echeverri Urrea, Fotolia ; 019ATAZLAN, Wikimedia Commons, CC by-sa 3.0

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ASTRONOMY - Camera Orion Rising

 2024 January 31

Camera Orion Rising
Image Credit & Copyright: Marcin Ślipko

Explanation: What does Orion rising look like to a camera? During this time of the year, the famous constellation is visible to the southeast just after sunset. From most Earthly locations, Orion's familiar star pattern, highlighted by the three-stars-in-a-row belt stars, rises sideways. An entire section of the night sky that includes Orion was photographed rising above Śnieżka, a mountain on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic. The long duration exposure sequence brings up many faint features including the Orion and Flame Nebulas, both encompassed by the curving Barnard's Loop. The featured wide-angle camera composite also captured night sky icons including the blue Pleiades star cluster at the image top and the red Rosette Nebula to the left of Orion. Famous stars in the frame include Sirius, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Aldebaran. Orion will appear successively higher in the sky at sunset during the coming months.

ASTRONOMY - SLIM Lands on the Moon

 2024 January 30

SLIM Lands on the Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: JAXA, Takara Tomy, Sony Co., Doshisha U.

Explanation: New landers are on the Moon. Nearly two weeks ago, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) released two rovers as it descended, before its main lander touched down itself. The larger of the two rovers can hop like a frog, while the smaller rover is about the size of a baseball and can move after pulling itself apart like a transformer. The main lander, nicknamed Moon Sniper, is seen in the featured image taken by the smaller rover. Inspection of the image shows that Moon Sniper's thrusters are facing up, meaning that the lander is upside down from its descent configuration and on its side from its intended landing configuration. One result is that Moon Sniper's solar panels are not in the expected orientation, so that powering the lander had to be curtailed and adapted. SLIM's lander has already succeeded as a technology demonstration, its main mission, but was not designed to withstand the lunar night -- which starts tomorrow.

LE JARDIN MERVEILLEUX DES EPICES - La fève de Tonka, l'épice riche en arôme

La fève de Tonka est la graine noire et ridée -- après séchage -- que l'on extrait du noyau du fruit d'un arbre tropical. Cette fève est notamment riche en coumarine, qui lui donne son goût de foin frais. Mais on peut aussi y déceler des saveurs chaudes de chocolat, de caramel, de vanille ou de musc. Une richesse aromatique qui la rend intéressante -- même si un peu cher -- en cuisine tout autant qu'en parfumerie. C'est sur elle que repose la renommée du fameux Shalimar, de Guerlain.

La fève de Tonka s'avère être un bon antioxydant. Elle présente aussi des vertus antispasmodiques et détoxifiantes. Mais attention, car à fortes doses, elle devient toxique, pouvant provoquer des lésions au foie et au cœur.

© Mecredis, Fred Benenson, Wikipedia, GFDL ; Michael Boy, Fotolia

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ASTRONOMY - The Pleiades: Seven Dusty Sisters

 2024 January 29

The Pleiades: Seven Dusty Sisters
Image Credit & Copyright: Craig Stocks

Explanation: The well-known Pleiades star cluster is slowly destroying part of a passing cloud of gas and dust. The Pleiades is the brightest open cluster of stars on Earth's sky and can be seen from almost any northerly location with the unaided eye. Over the past 100,000 years, a field of gas and dust is moving by chance right through the Pleiades star cluster and is causing a strong reaction between the stars and dust. The passing cloud might be part of the Radcliffe wave, a newly discovered structure of gas and dust connecting several regions of star formation in the nearby part of our Milky Way galaxy. Pressure from the stars' light significantly repels the dust in the surrounding blue reflection nebula, with smaller dust particles being repelled more strongly. A short-term result is that parts of the dust cloud have become filamentary and stratified. The featured deep image incorporates nearly 9 hours of exposure and was captured from Utah Desert Remote Observatory in Utah, USA, last year.

ASTRONOMY - Pluto in True Color

 2024 January 28

Pluto in True Color
Image Credit: NASA, JHU APL, SwRI; Processing: Alex Parker

Explanation: What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging. The result featured here, released three years after the raw data was acquired by New Horizons, is the highest resolution true color image of Pluto ever taken. Visible in the image is the light-colored, heart-shaped, Tombaugh Regio, with the unexpectedly smooth Sputnik Planitia, made of frozen nitrogen, filling its western lobe. New Horizons found the dwarf planet to have a surprisingly complex surface composed of many regions having perceptibly different hues. In total, though, Pluto is mostly brown, with much of its muted color originating from small amounts of surface methane energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun.

O FUTURO NO PRESENTE - Versatilidade - Carro voador

O primeiro carro voador do mundo destaca-se pela sua alta versatilidade. Este carro não se limita a ser um veículo de uso privado. O carro voador também poderá servir para transporte, segurança e forças de defesa.

Robert Dingemanse defendeu ainda que estuda aplicações do veículo na área de encomendas privadas. Existe já uma parceria estabelecida com a Sky Angels Air Ambulance. Trata-se de uma fornecedora de transporte médico de emergência no Reino Unido.

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LE MERVEILLEUX JARDIN DES EPICES - Le curcuma, l'épice qui colore nos assiettes

Le curcuma est une épice qui nous vient de l'Inde. C'est l'ingrédient principal du curry. Sa belle couleur jaune met du soleil dans nos assiettes. Et son parfum poivré, musqué et subtilement âcre donne indéniablement à nos plats un goût d'ailleurs.

Riche en curcumine, le curcuma est l'objet de nombreuses attentions scientifiques. Car il pourrait aider à protéger contre les maladies liées au stress oxydatif telles que les maladies cardiovasculaires ou la maladie d'Alzheimer. Il pourrait aussi permettre de prévenir la survenue de certains cancers. Et présenter des propriétés anti-inflammatoires intéressantes.

© Simon A. Eugster, Wikimedia Commons, CC by-sa 3.0 ; H. Zell, Wikimedia Commons, CC by-sa 3.0 ; magdal3na, Fotolia

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