A fungus affected hundreds of animals and humans in British Columbia and Washington State in the early 2000s. Scientists discovered that the infection killed porpoises and dolphins in the Salish Sea, suggesting that it may have affected cetaceans even before humans. The study covers how human-caused changes on land might influence aquatic creatures, focusing on the fungal disease Cryptococcus gattii.
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Fungi have assisted researchers to make progress in changing wood into a valuable source of good electricity, which could one day result in energy ballrooms .
The possibility of applying force to wood in order to produce an electric charge, which is named the piezoelectric effect, has been talked about since the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, the fadingly little amount of electricity the process makes has held back the idea.
(Photo : Skitterphoto)
Rotten White Fungus
A group under the leadership of Ingo Burgert at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has found how to twist the internal system of balsa wood to create the piezoelectric effect 55 times higher. The answer was to purposely rot the wood.