The Chesapeake Bay looks like a dirty bathtub, its waters turned brown with mud and awash in pollution and floating debris, including uprooted trees, propane tanks, even a battered dining-room chair.

Braving boat-damaging hazards, scientists are swarming over the bay to see if the massive stormwater runoff from Tropical Storm Lee last week is going to knock the troubled estuary for another loop, just as it was recovering from an especially rough summer.

“It just doesn’t look right,” Jamie Strong, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said of the malted-milk hue of the water as he and state biologist Zofia Noe cruised north from the Bay Bridge on Wednesday to sample water conditions. Along the way, they dodged partially submerged tree trunks — not always successfully — and skirted sprawling mats of grass and trash atop the water…Read more

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, Sep 14, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — The Algal Biomass Organization (ABO) today announced the agenda for its 5th Annual Algae Biomass Summit, the algae industry’s premier event. More than 800 attendees are expected to see and hear the more than 200 presentations and poster sessions that showcase technological breakthroughs in algae technologies as well as commercial applications in fuels, feed and other products. The event will be held October 24 – 27 in Minneapolis, Minn. at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis hotel…Read more

My parents always collected cep and chanterelle mushrooms and dried them on clothes lines crisscrossing our kitchen. Only when I was in my 20s did I find out that my father made chanterelle schnaps.
When it comes to mushrooms I am very conservative, and stick to the ones I know. For the more adventurous amongst you readers, I recommend attending a course by an expert mushroom hunter first.

What are mushrooms?
They belong to the fungi family like moulds and yeasts and are neither plant nor animal. They form a group of their own. fungi in general are present almost everywhere and they have adapted to many different environments. The mushrooms we eat make up only a tiny portion of the fungi world.
Fungi are not able to produce carbohydrates through photosynthesis and so digest living or dead organic material. They also often form a symbiotic relationship with another species, connecting into their root systems. For example, fungi supply a tree with trace minerals and the tree in return supplies the carbohydrates.
About 85 per cent of all higher plants have a fungal partner. Some of these symbiotic relationships have become very highly specialised so that certain fungi will only grow in the vicinity of certain trees, and in fact often derive their name from that circumstance. The larch bolete and the birch bolete are good examples, as is the field mushroom and the pavement mushroom.
The mushrooms we collect are the fruiting body of the fungi and their primary function is to disperse the spores with which the organism perpetuates itself…Read more

We got a lot of questions from homeowners this year concerning spots on their maple trees and hostas.

The spots on their maple tree leaves are due to a fungal disease known as tar spot, which is a disease caused by several fungi in the genus Rhytisma. Members of this genus also infect silver, sugar, red and Norway maple, and box elder. Although unsightly, the disease is not harmful to the host tree. According to Michigan State University plant pathology specialists, the first tar spot symptoms usually show up in early summer as small (less than 1/8 inch diameter), light-green to yellowish-green spots. The spots enlarge and color intensifies as summer progresses. Small, black, tar-like raised structures form on the upper surface within these yellow spots. The black spots continue to grow in diameter and thickness to the point where it looks like someone splashed tar on the leaves. (This is the time when homeowners become rather alarmed.) Symptoms tend to be more common on trees growing in moist, sheltered locations.

Spraying most trees with a fungicide is usually impractical. The tar spot fungi overwinter in fallen leaves, therefore the best way to manage the disease is to rake and destroy affected leaves in the fall to reduce the number of overwintering organisms that can infest newly emerging leaves the next spring. Neighbors should also rake and destroy their infected leaves in order for your management efforts to be effective. Mulching leaves will destroy many of the spots before they mature if the mulch pile is covered or turned before new leaves begin to emerge in the spring…Read more

My first ever encounter with a truffle occurred age six, somewhere in the Jura Mountains of France. My brother and I had pooled our pocket money to buy my father a birthday present. We settled upon a small Périgord truffle in oil, sealed in a shot glass. I had no idea what a truffle was, but understood this: they weren’t cheap. Quite why we had paid 25 francs for something that resembled an oversized, warty bogey in a jam jar was beyond our comprehension, but my mother assured us it was worth it for the exquisite taste, a flavour I would have to wait quite a few years to see if it really was worth it’s weight in gold.

Now, while looking for mushrooms above ground can be difficult even when you’re bang in the middle of a good cep season, trying to root out a subterranean fungus, relying on only a few pointers and perhaps the assistance of a creature with a keener sense of smell than you or I, is a completely different kettle of fish altogether. I had always disregarded truffles as something I was never going to find in the UK, until last autumn when I began to hear mutterings in and around Sussex of the South Downs having a rich history of truffle hunting, though sadly many of these fellows in the know have died and taken their knowledge and locations of the wild-truffle orchard with them…Read more

It has been suggested that perhaps only 10% of all species in the world have been named, and new species are discovered on a daily basis. Currently, in an era when scientific research is increasingly published online, the names and descriptions of all new species of algae, fungi and plants still must be lodged as printed copies at the libraries of several botanical institutions.

This existing, somewhat archaic, requirement for printed descriptions of new species to be deposited in relevant institutions has been a frustrating requirement of the code for scientists choosing to publish in online-only journals, such as BMC Evolutionary Biology. They have had to ensure that a printed copy of their article is also archived at several relevant institutions in addition to the version available online. This has become an impediment to science, not to mention creating a great deal of administrative hassle in the more efficient digital age. When the cost to scientists and institutions of subscribing to hard copies of journals is becoming prohibitive, not to mention the delays between article acceptance and publication inherent to publishing in print, why should online-only journals be penalised by the Code?…Read more

300 anganwadi workers protested yesterday, alleging supply of low-grade food and lack of space

The state of welfare schemes for children in Maharashtra is not what one would call ideal, as MiD DAY has pointed out through a series of articles recently. In continuation of the motif, here’s another group that accuses the state of poor implementation of the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme…Read more

Steven Soderbergh’s viral outbreak thriller Contagion debuts to the top of the box office. Sure, the film was star-studded, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off a killer train wreck. But perhaps its breakout success was due to its awesome moldy, infectious billboard.

To lure moviegoers, living bacteria and fungi were used to create 2 sinister one-of-a-kind billboards – complete with amazing little biohazard icons formed by the microbes. ScienceInsider reports.

First, the microorganisms were seeded onto stenciled letters in a pair of giant acrylic dishes. Then they gradually grew to form the movie’s title behind glass windows erected in an empty storefront in Toronto, where the film premiered…Read more

BRUNSWICK, Maine (NEWS CENTER) – The wet weather this spring may dampen the foliage colors this fall, as the leaves of many maple trees throughout the state have turned brown and dropped prematurely due to above normal levels of fungi.

Particularly hard hit are Norway Maples, which are not native to Maine, but are used extensively in urban landscaping and are more susceptible to tar leaf spot – a form of leaf blight.

“At this time of the year, with that kind of a crown, you shouldn’t be able to see any daylight through there,” explained Bill Ostrofsky, a forest pathologist with the Maine Forest Service, as he walked toward an ailing maple.  “You can see all this marginal browning and discoloration.  Sometimes there are irregular leaf spots on the leaves.”…Read more

Average pillows and mattresses contain millions of fungi cells from 16 species. These fungi, normally found in damp and mouldy places, develop from your night-time sweating. The average person sweats about 100 litres each year. In addition to fungi, other ­bed partners can be dust mites. Mattresses gain a pound or more each year from dust mites…Read more