ATLANTIC WIRE– According to a new study, psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” has a beneficial psychological impact on terminal cancer patients. Researchers in Los Angeles found that the hallucinogen reduced anxiety and depression, giving patients peace in their final days. The experiment involved 12 subjects with advanced-stage cancer between the ages of 36 and 58. While some are … Read More
July 2010 TED– Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture. Rachel Sussman is on a quest to celebrate the resilience of life by identifying and photographing continuous-living organisms that are 2,000 years … Read More
MOTHER NATURE NETWORK– It looks like any other sea slug, aside from its bright green hue. But the Elysia chlorotica is far from ordinary: it is both a plant and an animal, according to biologists who have been studying the species for two decades. Not only does E. chlorotica turn sunlight into energy — something only plants can do — … Read More
GUARDIAN– The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists. The gruesome hallmark of the fungus’s handiwork was found on the leaves of plants that grew in Messel, near Darmstadt in Germany, 48m years ago. The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control … Read More
ABC NEWS– Walking through the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon you would be hard pressed to notice it. But a fungus spreading through the roots of trees now covers 2,200 acres, making it the largest living organism ever found. Popularly known as the honey mushroom, the Armillaria ostoyae started from a single spore too small to see without a … Read More
