Lifeboat Foundation

Mycelia consume their food externally, by secreting powerful enzymes that break down molecules. In other words, they “digest” whatever substrate, or surface, they’re growing on, converting it to nutrients and—depending on the substrate—edible mushrooms.

Proponents say it’s a natural, more benign, and potentially cheaper alternative to the “scrape and burn” approach to environmental clean-up, which involves digging up contaminated soil and incinerating it.

The problem with that traditional approach is that it can remove potentially fertile topsoil, says Theresa Halula, who teaches mushroom cultivation at Merritt College in Oakland, California. Mycoremediation, on the other hand, she says, can help clean up toxic sites while actually improving soil fertility.

Continue reading “How oyster mushrooms helped clean up after California’s wildfires” »

There’s a four-bedroom Edinburgh unit with “original wood floors,” listed by Christine. And there’s a two-bathroom apartment in Gainesville with a double sofa bed and open kitchen plan, listed by Michel. A “beautiful apartment” in Berlin has a “floral feeling.” A three-bedroom in Rome includes “utilities and toiletries.”

There’s just one problem with these Airbnb listings: they don’t exist.

EU policymakers have been urged to shake up European diets by pouring public money into creating lab-grown meat as a viable mass-market alternative.

95 percent less water circa 2018.

Open-source farming could challenge Big Ag and take crop production to new heights.

Continue reading “The open-source movement to hack your arugula” »

There are 1.4 billion insects for each one of us. Though you often need a microscope to see them, insects are “the lever pullers of the world,” says David MacNeal, author of Bugged. They do everything from feeding us to cleaning up waste to generating $57 billion for the U.S. economy alone.

Today, many species are faced with extinction. When National Geographic caught up with MacNeal in Los Angeles, he explained why this would be catastrophic for life on Earth and why a genetically engineered bee could save hives—and our food supply—worldwide.

In field trials, colonies fed mycelium extract from amadou and reishi fungi showed a 79-fold reduction in deformed wing virus and a 45,000-fold reduction in Lake Sinai virus compared to control colonies.

Though it’s in the early stages of development, the researchers see great potential in this research.

“Our greatest hope is that these extracts have such an impact on viruses that they may help varroa mites become an annoyance for bees, rather than causing huge devastation,” said Steve Sheppard, a WSU entomology professor and one of the paper’s authors. “We’re excited to see where this research leads us. Time is running out for bee populations and the safety and security of the world’s food supply hinges on our ability to find means to improve pollinator health.”

Killing ticks and inoculating people has failed, so researchers try immunizing mice via vaccine-laced food.

• By Angus Chen on January 29, 2019

Scientists have discovered that grasses are able to short cut evolution by taking genes from their neighbours. The findings suggest wild grasses are naturally genetically modifying themselves to gain a competitive advantage.

Understanding how this is happening may also help scientists reduce the risk of genes escaping from GM crops and creating so called super-weeds—which can happen when genes from GM crops transfer into local wild plants, making them herbicide resistant.

Since Darwin, much of the theory of evolution has been based on common descent, where natural selection acts on the genes passed from parent to offspring. However, researchers from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield have found that grasses are breaking these rules. Lateral gene transfer allows organisms to bypass evolution and skip to the front of the queue by using genes that they acquire from distantly related species.

Circa 2018

From medical to agricultural to solar, quantum dots have uses far beyond the humble TV.

Continue reading “How quantum dots supercharge farming, medicine and solar, too” »