Archive for March, 2010
Well, MycoRant will help if possible. I got a message today from someone who is looking for one Dr. Gary Mills. The request is as follows, as it was received: Dear Sir —– I am trying to locate Dr. Gary Mills, who once worked for Terry Farms, (producer of farmed morels, based on Dr. Mills’ [...]
Tags: Gary Mills, growing morels, morels, Terry Farms
Now here is an interesting idea. Treat cows suffering from bovine tuberculosis (bTB) with mushroom extracts. There seems to be little (no) actual evidence this might work, but what the heck. A company called RPF Bioscience has a product called Myco Formula 5 which is touted as a treatment for bTB. RPF Bioscience is one [...]
Tags: bovine TB, bTB, mushroom extracts, RPF Bioscience
What information about those delicate fungal flavors and aromas will now yield itself to the prying machines of molecular biologists? French and Italian researchers announced in the journal Nature, that the genome of the Perigord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) has been sequenced. Of course if you followed fungal news on twitter, you’d already know this, [...]
Tags: genome sequencing, genomics, perigord black truffle, symbiosis genes, truffle genome sequenced, Tuber mating types, Tuber melanosporum
While perusing some of the content at Scientific American this morning, I saw an advertisement that enticed my mouse to click it. It was for Scitable by natureEducation. Scitable has the tagline “A Collaborative Learning Space for Science.” Scitable, the Online Science Library and Personal Learning Tool According the the site homepage, Scitable is: A [...]
Tags: education, genetics, learning network, molecular biology, Nature Publishing, on-line resource, Scitable
Once again, I have a copy of The Triumph of the Fungi by Nicholas P. Money available for review. The original reviewer was, for some reason, unable to complete the task, and much to his credit, has returned it to MycoRant. So, if there is anyone out there who would like to receive the book [...]
Mycology Monday is a great idea thought up by Genevieve Lewis-Gentry (aka @MycoFun). Genevieve works in an herbarium. “I am not a professional mycologist,” she explains, “though I work with fungi in my profession, and I certainly do love mycology and botany. @Mycofun is a way for me to spread things mycologically (or cryptogamically) interesting. [...]
Tags: #mycologymonday, MycoFun, Mycology Monday, twitter
What could be cooler than this headline: Fungi and lichen garden wins flower show’s supreme award. Neat! The event was the Ellerslie International Flower Show held at Hagley Park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The garden, a display of the plant kingdom in light, sound, movement and texture, uses plant materials associated with natural decay to [...]
Tags: art, Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Ellerslie International Flower Show, New Zealand
A couple of months ago, I ran across a UK-based website–The Glow Fungi Project. The site and the project is from a company called NIPHT (Novel Imaging and PHotonic Technologies–”nifty” for short) out of Edinburgh, Scotland. The company began offering kits of bioluminescent fungus in 2009 and plans to continue to provide kits for outdoor [...]
Tags: bioluminescence, bioluminescent fungi, fungi kits, Glow Fungi, glowfungi, NIPHT, Panellus stipticus, Patrick Hickey
In an unusual case of mycosis, a monkey at the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee has died after contracting an infection with the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans. The case is all the more sad since the animal was a rare cottontop tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) born in captivity, only just last May. According to Endangered monkey dies [...]
Tags: animal mycoses, cottontop tamarin, cryptococcosis, Cryptococcus neoformans
Polyurethane is used in a wide variety of products ranging from insulation, auto parts, plastic ware, packaging, adhesives and sealants, and many others. As a result, a large quantity of this useful and important plastic finds its way into waste streams every year. The problem is, polyurethane is resistant to degradation and has a reputation [...]
Tags: bioremediation, degradation of plastics, fungal composting, polurethane
In cooperation with Google, Popular Science magazine has placed all the content they have ever produced online and free for the browsing. According to the website: We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period [...]
Tags: history, Popular Science
Renowned mushroom photographer Taylor Lockwood is heading for Brasil (apparently also known as “Brazil”) soon on a mycological photo expedition. I learned this after I heard back from Taylor after I had sent him a message suggestion he consider contributing some fungal imagery to the Phylomon project (recently renamed “Phylo”). He showed some interest in [...]
Tags: Amanita rubescens, Brazil, Leccinum scabrosum, photography, Phylomon, Taylor Lockwood
News reports out of Zimbabwe state that six people have recently died there from eating poisonous wild mushrooms. The article Toxic Mushrooms Kill Six shows a picture of Galerina autumnalis, but the article does not state which mushrooms are responsible for the tragic fatalities, which included a three year-old girl. Six people have died in [...]
Tags: Africa, mushroom poisoning, Zimbabwe
