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Home / News / Tags / fungus
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We rather associate alligators and crocodiles with death, but these creatures could one day save your life, as a research team signaled at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. Blood proteins of the alligators could deliver new powerful antibiotics against infections accompanying diabetic ulcer... |
8 April 2008
02:47 GMT |
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It may seem silly: do pigeons represent a dangerous nuisance? The answer is: yes. Their dejections ruin monuments and statues. But it is more than that: they carry extremely virulent germs. Since Medieval Ages, the pigeons started to inhabit the European cities, where they easily found food in wastes discarded by hum... |
4 April 2008
09:25 GMT |
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Without counting with the microscopic fungi, there are 3,800 species of mushrooms in Europe alone. 250 species are toxic but very few can kill: about 12 species. The same mushroom species can have various effects, depending on its age, consumed amount and the health state of the consumer.In France, three mushrooms ar... |
2 April 2008
16:46 GMT |
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One of the most interesting shows offered by nature in tropical South America is represented by the leaf-cutter ants (Atta). A sole colony can leave a tree leafless in just one night. But these ants are real farmers, which do not eat the leaves, but use them for making compost for cultivating fungi in their undergrou... |
25 March 2008
05:57 GMT |
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It seems simple: XX sex chromosomes make a female, XY sex chromosomes make a male. But sex is an evolutionary achievement which did not appear just like that. A new research published in the journal "PLoS" points to the great similarities between the DNA sequences that determine the sex of plants and animals and the ... |
18 March 2008
14:06 GMT |
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There's nothing impressive in this Australian frog: dull coloration and just up to 5.5 cm (2.2 in) in length. But the Rheobatrachus frogs, first described in 1973, are nothing ordinary. Their name of gastric-brooding frogs speaks about an amazing breeding behavior in this species. While keeping them in an aquari... |
2 February 2008
04:59 GMT |
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Humans come as boys or girls, but some organisms do not and without being hermaphrodites, they still have sex. In fact, one of the most primitive types of sexual differentiation has just been described by a team from Duke University Medical Center lead by Dr. Joseph Heitman in the journal Nature. The ancestral sex-d... |
18 January 2008
05:27 GMT |
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1. In Eastern Europe and Italy, mushroom harvesting is a tradition, and the annual number of intoxication cases and deaths is high. Dishes based on wild mushrooms are something common, but there are about 250 species of toxic mushrooms growing in Europe. The most dangerous are death cap (Amanita phalloides) and destr... |
3 December 2007
14:16 GMT |
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We are damping in the environment tonnes of poison (read pesticides) that finally accumulate in the water, soil and air, envenoming us directly through food, drunk water and breathed air, not to mention that all the species suffer. The ecological agriculture tries to eliminate these poisons and one way to keep off pe... |
14 November 2007
03:43 GMT |
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The discovery of the antibiotics by the middle of the 20th century seemed to have doomed the human pathogens. They proved effective against many bacteria and fungi causing hospital infections, like meningitis, pneumonia and scarlet fever, which before were deadly. But antibiotics cannot attack viruses, like HIV or fl... |
13 November 2007
14:06 GMT |
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Do you look like a Christmas tree under the strobe light of the club? Covered by "globes" of dandruff? That's because of a fungus that impedes your search for a mate. All this while having sex on your head perhaps even at this moment. A research team at Procter & Gamble Beauty, a subsidiary of the company produc... |
8 November 2007
02:40 GMT |
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This is the frog terminator: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungus decimating complete populations of frogs and other amphibian species worldwide. The fungus kills off the frogs by clogging their skin and essentially asphyxiating them. By now it spread from Central America to Australia, Japan, Europe and the US. R... |
30 October 2007
05:38 GMT |
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This is the frog terminator: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungus that is wiping out frogs and other amphibian species all over the world. Now researchers have found a secret weapon that enables the fungus to travel further and withstand harsh conditions longer, turning it more dangerous: sex. The fungus seems to... |
7 August 2007
04:53 GMT |
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Having sex with yourself is one thing, but some species manage to sexually reproduce in this manner, without the need for a partner. Now a team at the University of Nottingham investigated this amazing ability on a key fungus species, Aspergillus nidulans. This fungus has evolved in such a way that the same individua... |
6 August 2007
03:42 GMT |
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We pride ourselves with our scientific discoveries, but we do nothing more than rediscover what nature already knew and used for ages. For example, humans employ antibiotics for less than a century, but ants have always chemically disinfected their nests, using coniferous resin, as found by a team at the University o... |
22 June 2007
03:33 GMT |
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Global warming hits hard on the amphibian species: a previously unknown fungal infection is decimating populations across the globe, with an extreme virulence in tropical America and Australia. Now a research points out that bacteria occurring naturally on the skin of some salamanders can slow down the deadly fungal ... |
30 May 2007
09:16 GMT |
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Fungi can be found everywhere in some organic chemicals, from water to pastures and even in sand dunes. But for those forming mushrooms their favorite environment remains the soil of the forests, where the biggest diversity in species, sizes, shapes and colors is to be found. Some species are poisonous, others are co... |
18 May 2007
15:14 GMT |
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How big can a mushroom be? A few tens of pounds and with a 2-3 ft diameter? That's small, compared to the largest one that ever existed: as big as a tree! A team at the University of Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., has come with conclusive evidence that one of the weirdes... |
23 April 2007
04:16 GMT |
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