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Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?
One scientist has tantalizing results, but others are not convinced. By John J. Berger.
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‘Bionic mushrooms’ that generate electricity created by scientists
A regular shop-bought mushroom has been turned into an electricity generator in a process scientists hope will one day be used to power devices. The “bionic mushroom” was covered with bacteria capable of producing electricity and strands of graphene that collected the current. Shining a light on the structure activated the bacteria’s ability to photosynthesise, and as the cells harvested this glow they generated a small amount of electricity known as a “photocurrent”.
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Magic mushrooms
From making biofuels to eating up harmful plastics, fungi could help us build a greener planet. Fungi could not just help rid the planet of plastic by degrading it, but by making it obsolete it, too. Research in the Kew report suggests that naturally made materials using fungal mycelia are being used increasingly often instead of more harmful materials such as polystyrene and leather.
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Is This Fungus Using a Virus To Control An Animal's Mind?
An unusual detective story. By Ed Yong.
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Common fungal infections are 'becoming incurable' and causing more deaths than malaria or breast cancer worldwide, say researchers
Common fungal infections are “becoming incurable” with global mortality exceeding that for malaria or breast cancer because of drug-resistant strains which “terrify” doctors and threaten the food chain, a new report has warned. Writing in a special “resistance” edition of the journal Science, researchers from Imperial College London and Exeter University have shown how crops, animals and people are all threatened by nearly omnipresent fungi. By Alex Matthews-King.
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This fungus has over 23,000 sexes and no qualms about it
Sex is extra strange if you're a shroom.
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Plastic-degrading fungus found in Pakistan trash dump
Scientists found the fungus Aspergillus tubingensis breaking down plastic in a rubbish dump in Islamabad, Pakistan.
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Scientists find fungus with an appetite for plastic in rubbish dump
We are producing ever greater amounts of plastic – much of which ends up as garbage. What’s more, because plastic does not break down in the same way as other organic materials, it can persist in the environment over hundreds of years. Scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Kunming Institute of Botany in China have recently identified a fungus which could help deal with our waste problem by using enzymes to rapidly break down plastic materials.
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Yeah, Maybe Don't Use This App That Supposedly Identifies Poison Mushrooms
While Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are busy debating whether a malevolent, future AI could dispatch machine-gun toting drones to kill us all, a current-day “revolutionary AI” could get you killed right now. Truffle, previously Mushroom, is an app that claim it can “identify any mushroom instantly with just a pic.” Mushrooms are famously hard to identify, even by trained mycologists (scientists who study fungi), so an automated app seems like a risky venture. You know, because many mushrooms are poisonous, and if you eat the wrong ones your organs will shut down and you will freaking die.
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Scientists find earliest intact mushroom fossils
Paleontologists from China, New Zealand and the United States have found four intact mushroom fossils, sources with the Chinese Academy of Sciences said Friday. The four, well preserved in Burmese amber for at least 99 million years, are the earliest complete mushroom fossils ever found. The findings represent four species of mushroom. A stalk and a complete cap containing distinct gills are visible in most of the mushrooms, which are two to three millimeters long.
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These Mushroom-Based Drones Eat Themselves at Mission’s End
Once the job is done, the tiny gliders are designed to disappear. By Tim Wright.
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Gift of the fungi: Mushrooms — yes, mushrooms — could help save the world
What can't mushrooms do? From cleaning chemical spills to mitigating topsoil loss, they're nature's unsung heroes. By Samuel Blackstone.
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Gift of the fungi: Mushrooms — yes, mushrooms — could help save the world
Earlier this month, mushrooms momentarily sprouted into the news when two studies from Johns Hopkins and New York University found that a single magic mushroom trip (a mushroom with the naturally occurring psychedelic ingredient psilocybin) produced immediate, substantial and prolonged improvements in the levels of anxiety, depression and hopelessness for cancer-stricken patients. The studies also noted significant increases in quality of life, life meaning and optimism for participants. Though studies measuring the effects of a positive mental outlook on fighting cancer are largely inconclusive, it was nonetheless a positive development...
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The Life-Changing Magic of Mushrooms
A landmark pair of studies shows that giving people with depression and anxiety magic mushrooms made them better for months. By Olga Khazan.
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First 13 cases of deadly fungal infection emerge in US
Thirteen cases of a sometimes deadly and often drug-resistant fungal infection, Candida auris, have been reported in the United States for the first time, health officials said Friday. (Nov. 4, 2016)
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Giant Genetic Map Shows Life’s Hidden Links
In a monumental set of experiments, spread out over nearly two decades, biologists removed genes two at a time to uncover the secret workings of the cell. By Veronique Greenwood.
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Documentary - The Magic of Mushrooms
Professor Richard Fortey delves into the fascinating and normally hidden kingdom of fungi. From their spectacular birth, through their secretive underground life to their final explosive death, Richard reveals a remarkable world that few of us understand or even realise exists - yet all life on Earth depends on it. In a specially built mushroom lab, with the help of mycologist Dr Patrick Hickey and some state-of-the-art technology, Richard brings to life the secret world of mushrooms as never seen before and reveals the spectacular abilities of fungi to break down waste and sustain new plant life, keeping our planet alive.
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The Wild World of Mushroom Hunting
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Two’s Company, Three’s a Lichen?
New research challenges the one fungus-one alga paradigm of how lichens form. By Steph Yin.
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Lucky bug eluded eternal entombment in 50 million-year-old amber
A chunk of amber found along the Baltic Sea in Russia provides evidence roughly 50 million years old of an extremely fortunate bug. By Will Dunham.
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