Alligator Blood Could Treat HIV
	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 diabeti ... [read more >>]
	08 April 2008, 02:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Pigeons Are Not Good
	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 humans. They started to nest on roofs, bridges, walls, or statues. It makes sense: its wild ancestor, the rock pig ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2008, 09:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

About Poisonous Mushrooms
	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 are the main killers, making 98 % of the deadly cases: the death cap (Amanita phalloides), the fool's mushroom (Amanit ... [read more >>]
	02 April 2008, 16:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Ants Evolved Agricultural Systems
	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 underground colonies. A new research made at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and published in t ... [read more >>]
	25 March 2008, 05:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A History of the Sex Chromosomes
	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 DNA that encodes the mating types in certain fungi (fungi do not have differentiated sexes, but matin ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

This Mother Grows Her Kids Inside Her Stomach!
	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 aquarium, researchers were taken totally by surprise to see how one of the frogs opened her mouth and started to spit ... [read more >>]
	02 February 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Molecular Fossil Sex
	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-determining genes were described in one of the oldest fungus species, Phycomyces blakesleeanus. Fungi do not possess sex c ... [read more >>]
	18 January 2008, 05:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Four Facts About Fungi
	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 destroying angel (Amanita virosa), which can cause death if ingested. 2. Which is the world's largest living organism? Yo ... [read more >>]
	03 December 2007, 14:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fungus + Scorpion Venom = Powerful Non-Contaminant Insect Killer
	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 pests without pesticides is by using their pathogens bacteria and fungi, which do not harm the environment. A new researc ... [read more >>]
	14 November 2007, 03:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Infectious Diseases That Have Killed Millions of People
	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 flue virus; many cause allergies and kill many beneficial microorganisms. The under use of antibiotics (when a patient does ... [read more >>]
	13 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Your Dandruff Has Sex!
	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 producing the large array of household items, from toilet tissue to shampoo, announced on Tuesday they ... [read more >>]
	08 November 2007, 02:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Cure Against the Frog Terminator Has Been Found!
	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. Researchers have been looking helplessly at this frog slayer how adding to habitat loss, climate change, contamination and exp ... [read more >>]
	30 October 2007, 05:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Secret Weapon of the Killer Fungus: Sex
	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 kill off the frogs by clogging their skin and essentially asphyxiating them, spreading from Australia to the US. In US, ... [read more >>]
	07 August 2007, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Fertilize Yourself
	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 individual has two different sexes at the same time. When it's time for sex, the fungus turns on its internal sexua ... [read more >>]
	06 August 2007, 03:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Do Animals Use Antibiotics?
	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 of Lausanne, Switzerland. Wood ants (Formica paralugubris) observed in the Swiss Jura Mountains pick balls of solidified c ... [read more >>]
	22 June 2007, 03:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Bacteria Found to Fight the Killer Fungus
	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 disease. The researchers bathed red-backed salamanders, a species vulnerable to the disease, in two different bacteri ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2007, 09:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mushrooms
	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 comestible, but all of them share one particularity: they lack chlorophyll and cannot use the sunlight to produce biochemic ... [read more >>]
	18 May 2007, 15:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Ancient Mushrooms Were as Big as Trees
	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 weirdest and most mysterious fossils ever found, discovered in 1859 and widespread at its time (from Canada to Arabia ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2007, 04:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia