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POPSDo Plants Have Feelings? If plants do have some sort of "feelings", what are all the vegans and vegetarians going to do? After all, you can't live on love alone... ;)
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POPSThe Humungous Fungus See wikipedia: Largest Organism Armillaria ostoyae (Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Armillaria_ostoyae.jpg)
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POPSA 'Time Bomb' for World Wheat Crop The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world's wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S.
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POPS"I've seen the future and it's made of mushrooms" more: The inventors have started a company called Ecovative Design to market the technology, and I think they’re really onto something. Just imagine if they’re able to form this product into low-cost, biodegradable auto body panels and other automotive components. Or counter tops. Or flooring. They could even conceivably figure out a way to make children’s toys out of the material. For my sake, I hope they stop short of making dishes and kitchen utensils out of them, though. I don’t eat ANYTHING that touches mushrooms. Blech.
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POPSFarming And Chemical Warfare: A Day In The Life Of An Ant The bacteria produce antifungal compounds that stop the microfungal pathogen from attacking the garden. This discovery was the first clearly demonstrated example of an animal, other than humans, that uses bacteria to produce antibiotics to deal with pathogens. "Interestingly, the tight association between ant, bacteria and pathogen will sometimes result in the pathogen winning. This interplay has been described as a chemical 'arms race' between the bacteria and fungus, with one side beating the other as new compounds are evolved," said Professor Currie. "At the moment, we are beginning to understand the chemical warfare at the genetic level, and it is likely that these types of interactions are more prevalent in nature than previously thought." So how exactly does an ant go about forming partnerships with a fungus and a bacterium? No one really knows.
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POPSFour Facts About Fungi From about 4,400 species of fungi found in Europe, one third are close to extinction. The causes: contamination and overexploitation. In the western world, over 20% of the people have a fungus infection called Athlete's Foot
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POPSMonsanto GM-corn Harvest Fails Massively in South Africa "One can't see from the outside whether a plant is unseeded. One must open up the cob leaves to establish the problem,' he said. The seedless cobs show no sign of disease or any kind of fungus. They just have very few seeds, often none at all. Corn is the main staple food for South Africa's 48-million people. The three maize varieties which failed to produce seeds were designed with a built-in resistance to weed-killers, and manipulated to increase yields per hectare.
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POPSToy Helicopters Hover Over Whales to Monitor Health The findings aren't enough to establish patterns of illness because years of monitoring are required, she said. `We can't really say that animals are sick: finding bacteria or a fungus or a virus doesn't imply that an animal is sick, it just implies that it's infected,'' she said. ``That's exactly why we need a long-term study..."
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POPSAgriculture, from a different angle Several tribes of bark beetles are also major forest pests, and they farm their fungus gardens as their only source of food by growing the crop inside the sapwood of dead or dying trees. But the leaf-cutter ants are the modern pioneers, and their farming techniques are the most sophisticated of all, according to Schultz and Brady. They involve three separate but mutually dependent organisms that must all work together: The ants that eat leaves, grasses and flowers; the fungus that grows in the ant gardens; and a unique bacterium that lives and grows on the skin of the ants for mutual support. interesting.
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POPSThe Cook's Thesaurus Thanks Bignosemousie. I was looking up two ingredients from your recipe (bulgur & cremini mushrooms) when I happened upon this wonderful site.
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