Archive for May, 2010
More museums ought to do stuff like this. The National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria recently put together a display, The mushrooms – familiar or dangerous: Briefly presented is kingdom Fungi – characteristics, distribution, and systematics. Photos and replicas show the most popular edible mushrooms and their poisonous counterparts, and how to distinguish [...]
Tags: Bulgaria, mushrooms, Science Centric
If you plan on collecting more than “a gallon” of mushrooms in the State of Washington, you better get your permit. Details in Commercial mushroom permits available published by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin: Permits for commercial mushroom gathering in the three Blue Mountain forests are now available. The permits are required for anyone intending to [...]
Tags: commercial collecting, mushroom collecting, permits, Washington state, wild mushrooms
The Yeast Resource Center Public Image Repository (YRC PIR) is a large database of fluorescence microscopy images of yeast, with a focus on the important model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae with some attention given to S. pombe. 84,270 Experiments 530,982 images ~450 gigabytes of data Not bad. A press release posted at 7th Space offers a [...]
Tags: fluorescence microscopy, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast, Yeast Resource Center Public Image Repository, YRC PIR
A couple of days ago, I was perusing some wonderful stuff at a local bird seed and garden supply establishment. It was like an oasis in the middle of town. The property took up a whole city block and was what remained of an old farm that existed on the high prairie that is now [...]
Tags: art, fungal sculpture, garden decorations, JJ Potts, mycoart, sculpture
Afghan poppy farmers, who grow a big chunk of the poppies used to supply the world with opium, are accusing NATO of infecting their fields with a poppy-killing fungus. They just might be right. According to Fungus hits Afghan opium poppies: A serious disease is affecting opium poppies in Afghanistan, Antonio Maria Costa, the head [...]
Tags: biocontrol, mycoherbacide, opium, Papaver somniferum, Pleospora papaveracea, poppies
Valley Fever, also known as coccidioidomycosis, is an infection caused by a fungus endemic to the dry Southwest region of the United Stated. Although the causative agent, Coccidioides immitis, it is known to exist in the Chihuahua Desert region there is a large discrepancy between the number of cases reported in Arizona and neighboring New [...]
Tags: Coccidioides immitis, coccidioidomycosis, New Mexico, nikkomycin Z, valley fever
An interesting article at FastCompany.com describes a sustainable design project–What would you ask nature? Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when [...]
Tags: biomimicry, mycelium, nature-inspired design, sustainable living
I do not know how Kevin Lewis of Boston.com found out about a forthcoming Evolution and Human Behavior paper by Pacheco-Cobos, L. et al., “Sex Differences in Mushroom Gathering: Men Expend More Energy to Obtain Equivalent Benefits” but you gotta’ respect him for it. In his column, Uncommon Knowledge, Lewis briefly describes the results of [...]
Tags: gathering mushrooms, human behavior, mushroom gathering, mushroom hunting
