Copyright © 1987, 2000 by Louise Freedman and the Mycological Society of San Francisco A MykoWeb and MSSF Page
Let’s Become Fungal!
Inspired by conversations with: Francisca Álvarez Sánchez, Carolina Caycedo, Annalee Davis, Maya Errázuriz, Juan Ferrer, Lilian Fraiji, Giuliana Furci, Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Yina Jiménez Suriel, Patricia Kaishian, Mirla Klijn and Olaf Boswijk, Lola Malavasi and Daniela Morales Lisac, Martina Manterola and Carmen Serra, Camila Marambio, Mariana Martínez Balvanera, Claudia Martínez Garay, Lina Meija and Luciana Fleischman, Tomaz Morgado Françozo and Marília Carneiro Brandão, Marion Neumann, Maria Alice Neves, Tara Rodríguez Besosa, Raquel Rosenberg, Juli Simon, Ela Spalding, Gianine Tabja, Gabriela Flores del Pozo and Lucia Monge, Fer Walüng, Tatyana Zambrano
Chengdu China - Sichuan Food - Tiny Urban Kitchen
Jen from Tiny Urban Kitchen visit Sichuan province and has a chance to explore all different sorts of Chengdu food, from spicy hot pot to rabbit heads!
Isopod Site
Pillbugs, sowbugs, roly-polies and woodlice, collectively referred to as isopods, are land-dwelling crustaceans that feed on decaying organic matter.
Termite Ecology in the First Two Decades of the 21st Century: A Review of Reviews
Termite ecology came of age in 1978 with the seminal review of Wood and Sands which by considering the quantitative contributions made by termites to the carbon cycle at the landscape level concluded that they were major players in tropical ecosystems. Subsequent field work in the succeeding two decades was summarised in 2000 by Bignell and Eggleton, the most recent review which attempted to cover the entire topic in detail, which included 188 listed references and has been extensively cited for almost 20 years. Subsequent summaries more narrowly defined or in some cases more superficial are listed in the bibliography. In this overview, the main and subsidiary headings in Bignell and Eggleton are revisited and reclassified in the light of 186 selected articles added to the relevant literature since 2000, and some earlier work. While the literature on termite ecology remains buoyant, it has declined relative to publications on other aspects of termite biology. Overall, the thesis that termites have a major impact on, and are major indicators of soil health and landscape integrity in the tropics and sub-tropics is maintained, but the drivers of local diversity, abundance and biomass remain complex, with many biographical, edaphic and optimum sampling issues not completely resolved. The large increase in diversity and abundance data from Neotropical biomes can also be noted.
The Sifter - A Food History Research Tool
The Sifter is a public database, free to all users. It is a tool for finding and comparing historical and contemporary writing on food and food-related topics. It is overseen by an advisory board composed of members from The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery as well as other friends of food history. As with Wikipedia, the Sifter will be populated by its users. All entries will have an English translation, enabling users to search languages they cannot read. Soon, we will have over 100 languages represented. Registered users will be able to make corrections and add new information. Future releases will include a data visualization component. We also plan to include more resources linking to digitized photographs, artworks, television and film. With the aid of this tool, it is our hope that what has been invisible will come into focus.
Parachord is “a new kind of music player that invites all yo...
Parachord is “a new kind of music player that invites all your streams, local audio files, and playlists scattered across multiple services to the same party”.
Barry Webb Documents a Marvelous, Macro Array of Colorful Slime Molds
Thanks to Webb's up-close, high-resolution shots, we glimpse a phenomenally beautiful world that is otherwise virtually invisible.
The Great Season — 13FOREST Gallery
On Friday, January 24, 13FOREST Gallery will open The Great Season, an exhibition of new and recent acrylic work by painter Nicole Duennebier. Dark and sumptuous, The Great Season highlights a fantastical six-panel painting that associates the random beauty of nature with an elaborate 19th-century parlor game. Set against black backgrounds, Duennebier’s complex forms strongly refer to Baroque still-life paintings in which fruits and vegetables simultaneously emerge and pass into different stages of maturity. A key difference in Duennebier’s work is that, rather than render images of everyday objects, she bases them on her fascination with biology, particularly bacteria, fungi and other objects hidden from view. Referring to her use of darkness, the artist states that her inky backgrounds are “like a primordial soup, a pool of black that springs forth a decadent and sometimes horrible growth.” Each of the paintings in the show is associated with lush proliferation. In Bright Beast After Nature, for instance, a black background gives rise to a nebula of unfolding, biomorphic forms that seem to divide and overtake one another. Painted in thin, translucent layers, the work suggests a still life captured in only one of many stages it will eventually pass through. With Bright Beast Dissected View Duennebier gives an equally fantastic image of the engine behind such proliferation. Similar to vivisections seen in science textbooks, the painting shows the surface of a soft, woolly plant and the interior, biological source of its existence. In content the “engine” plays with the idea of a still life, but one made of flowers, vegetables and animal viscera. Duennebier’s centerpiece in The Great Season is a vast, six-panel painting titled, Hydnellum Myriorama. Its title refers to a type of fungus found in nature and to a Victorian card game – myriorama – in which children could arrange a series of illustrated cards to form hundreds of different landscapes. In Duennebier’s six panels are hybrid images that resemble Baroque still lifes, coral, fur, crystals and close-ups of microscopic fauna. Each of the forms emerges from nothing and stands bathed in a common light source. Despite the panels’ differing environments, Duennebier negates their importance by enabling viewers to arrange the panels into aesthetic experiences of their own choice. With Hydenellum Myriorama, the random potential of generation and decline in nature is given its parallel in art. Of her own work Duennebier states: “My interests in natural phenomenon (dermoid cysts, fungus, invasive flora/fauna) and my love of candied Old Master opulence always seem to be present in my painting… Painting with attention to detail, I’ve become accustomed to the fact that nature in itself, or anything living really, never totally allows you to have a perfectly idealized experience. Everything is always spewing, dripping, rotting a little.”
Ingredient Database | Deep-Researched Cosmetic Ingredients | Roots by Benda
Deep-researched cosmetic ingredient database — MoS calculations, SCCS citations, dermal absorption, sensitization data. Multi-jurisdiction regulatory status.
Investigating ancient human DNA preservation on cave walls and in rock art
Previous efforts to link Palaeolithic cultural records to specific populations through DNA analysis have focused on materials from archaeological floor deposits such as bones, sediments, and artefacts. In this study, we explore whether rock art, a spatially distinct expression of human activity, can also preserve DNA traces from its creators. We analyse DNA preservation in pigment samples collected in and around 24 rock art panels from 11 caves across Spain and Portugal, including simple marks (from nine sites), hand stencils (Maltravieso Cave, Extremadura, Spain), and figurative paintings (Cave of Altamira, Cantabria, Spain). We recover traces of ancient human mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, unaccompanied by faunal DNA, from a pigmented calcite crust at Escoural Cave (Portugal), as well as from an unpigmented cave wall sample from the same site. The absence of faunal DNA in both samples suggests direct DNA deposition through human contact. In contrast, three additional unpigmented samples, from Escoural and Covarón Cave (Asturias, Spain), yielded mixtures of human and faunal DNA, suggesting indirect deposition. Although our results do not conclusively link ancient human DNA preservation to the generation of cave art, we show that traces of human DNA can persist on cave walls for thousands of years.
