A post at Time .com sheds a slightly humorous light on what is certainly a  tragic situation for those involved, with The New Danger-Career: Mushroom Hunting?:

The Guardian reports that there has been an “explosion in the number of edible fungi clinging to tree stumps and undergrowths in northern Italy” and that the increase has resulted in a proportional upsurge in the number of mushroom pickers.

While hunting mushrooms might not seem like the most deadly of missions–after all, eating them is where the real danger is, right?–it’s the location that proves to be the problem. The terrain where the mushrooms are growing is marked with steep hills and cliffs and a number of hunters have fallen to their death.

It is certainly unusual for that many people to die of accidents while foraying for mushrooms. Perhaps they should be more careful to avoid the “one time only” base jumps.

"Hey look! A mushroom!" (Wiki Commons)

Christina Cappy, a member of the UW-Madison chapter of Engineers Without Borders and one of the coordinators for the Clean Vilas Beach Coalition, said the first solution the group wants to build is a biofiltration garden. The basic design would include a solar-powered pump to pull water out of the swimming area. The water would then flow back downhill through a series of terraces containing native wetland plants and fungi, and re-enter the swimming area cleaner than it started.

Wetland plants are already widely used to filter sediments and excess nutrients in rain gardens and other storm water projects around the country. And mushrooms – particularly oyster, shiitake, and a variety called shaggy mane – can fight a number of waterborne pathogens, including E. coli and Staphylococcus.

The lake’s beaches have had a spotty record of late with closings due to excessive algae growth and the presence of E. coli bacteria. It was also closed once after an experimental treatment to control the carp population. High salt concentrations, sedimentation, and contaminated runoff water have also made things less than ideal for would-be beach goers on the shores of Lake Wingra.

View of Lake Wingra from one of its beaches (Carol Mitchel/Flickr)

Remember that brain fungus that forces “zombie ants” to leave their colonies and march around feeding a fungal organism in their brains until one day it pops out and kills them? What if the terrorists get their hands on it?

Uh-huh. Crazy! If ant brains were really similar to human brains it might be worth a shot. But then again, if the underlying molecular mechanism by which the behavioral change is effected in ants, perhaps by some analogous means some progress could be made in that direction. But, in humans, it certainly would not involve direct use of the fungus.

The article goes on to quote a national security blogger,  Adam Weinstein of Current Intelligence who writes some interesting paranoid thoughts in a post entitled Zombie Ants: Should Governments Be Scared?

No, they shouldn’t. Decent pictures of ants with fungus growing out of their heads though. I can’t find any images of the exact fungus referenced in the research recently published in Biology Letters (Ophiocordyceps) but this one of Cordyceps from wiki commns is pretty spectacular.

Cordyceps on the job (Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service - SRS-4552, United States)

In the next to final qualifying round, the remaining five artists competed for one of three spots in the final competition. The winner will get a gallery show and $100k. Not bad as far as inspiration goes. The challenge was to create something inspired by a trip to a nature preserve and to also use something collected at the preserve as a component of the work.

Like him or not, one of the most (maybe even THE most) interesting artists on the show is Miles. He is weird, quirky, unedited, and yes perhaps a bit manipulative. But, I happen to like his work.  As it turns out, he made it into the final three with his nature-inspired work “Fungus Study, Vol.  #1″ He found a dried mushroom of some sort (couldn’t really tell what it was) on a piece of dead wood and used that to launch into a rather tangential interpretation. It was cool though, and he included the whole fungus on a little shelf as part of his installation.

Here is what Jeanne Greenberg, one of the judges, had to say about Miles in one of her blog posts:

On the show I say that Miles’s work is without humor. Yet, behind the scenes he projects a sinister wit. His obsession with poisonous or dangerous materials pops up episode after episode, and his hole poking contraption was, in retrospect, rather absurd. I stand corrected, his humor is hidden behind a dry practice. Miles starts with a kernel of an idea, and then grows it out. This additive approach can be limiting if the starting idea, in this case the parasitic fungus, is all you have. Especially given his self-described incapacity to go beyond a set system. Hoping he breaks out of his mold (ha, ha).

Bravo makes it hard to get images off their site and I am sure this is a copyrighted image, but since I am using it in a review of sorts of their show, I think this low resolution image is fair use.

Fungus Study Vol.1 #1 by Miles from "Work of Art" Episode 109 (Barbara Nitke/Bravo)

So if you if you are a fan of art and appreciate creative processes check out “Work of Art.” I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

Button mushrooms. They're probably good for you. (Sakkra Paiboon/Flickr)

I seem to recall reading some years ago about research indicating that eating raw button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) caused increased incidence of stomach cancer in laboratory animals. Since then, I have not eaten a raw one. I probably ought to look into updating my information on that.

On the other hand, evidence that button mushrooms are actually pretty good for you has been on the rise for some time and a recent recent flurry of news activity has made a point of it. A typical report is Researchers Say Eating White Button Mushrooms Boost Immunity by Linda Young:

Go ahead and add mushrooms to salads and other dishes. Not only are they low in calories and loaded with vitamins and minerals, but researchers say that eating mushrooms can help boost your immune system.

A recent study found white button mushrooms helped to improve the maturity of cells critical to sustaining healthy immune systems in the body to fight viruses.

ScienceDaily also covered it with Researchers Study Benefits of White Button Mushrooms:

The study was conducted at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University by center director Simin Meydani, colleague Dayong Wu, and others.

The results suggest that white button mushrooms may promote immune function by increasing production of antiviral and other proteins that are released by cells while seeking to protect and repair tissue.

[BTW, when you plug the text from article written for many of what I call "news aggregation and rewriting sites"  into a plagiarism checker, you get some interesting results. ]

Now, I have looked at the abstract for the paper on which this news is based and the researchers used “extracts” in their experiments, so it is unclear to me (without reading the whole paper, which costs an unreasonable amount of money to do) whether this has any bearing on the “cooked versus uncooked” mushroom issue.

Nutritional immunologists Simin Meydani (left) and Dayong Wu evaluate the capacity of immune cells to kill their target. Here, the researchers review data generated from a gamma counter. (Stephen Ausmus)

The news writers jumped on this because of a recent article, Boost Immunity With Food and Sun, published by the Agricultural Research Service. What I find a little odd is the the reference research is from a paper published in The journal of Nutrition in 2008, so it is not exactly new information. The original paper is White button mushrooms have been shown to enhance immune response, which contributes to their antitumor property:

White button mushrooms(Agaricus bisporus) (WBM) constitute 90% of the total mushrooms consumed in the United States; however, the health benefit of this strain in general is not well studied. Furthermore, little is known about WBM’s immunologic effects. Dendritic cells (DC) are the most potent antigen presenting cells and play a pivotal role in immune response by linking innate and adaptive immune responses. In this study, we investigated the effect of in vitro supplementation with WBM on maturation of bone marrow-derived DC (BMDC) of C57BL mice. BMDC were differentiated in the presence of whole mushroom concentrate at 50, 100, or 200 mg/L. Results showed that mushroom supplementation dose dependently increased the expression of maturation markers CD40, CD80, CD86, and major histocompatibility complex-II. Consistent with the changes in the phenotypic markers, functional assay for DC maturation showed that mushroom supplementation decreased DC endocytosis and increased intracellular interleukin (IL)-12 levels. Furthermore, using a syngeneic T cell activation model, we found that WBM-supplemented DC from BALB/c mice presented ovalbumin antigen to T cells from DO11.10 mice more efficiently as demonstrated by increased T cell proliferation and IL-2 production. In conclusion, WBM promote DC maturation and enhance their antigen-presenting function. This effect may have potential in enhancing both innate and T cell-mediated immunity leading to a more efficient surveillance and defense mechanism against microbial invasion and tumor development.

I have requested a reprint of the paper to study it further and I also asked the main author, Dayong Wu, for any updated information on the relationship between eating raw button mushrooms and stomach cancer. I’ll keep you posted.