Slashdot Mirror
Radiation-eating Fungi
SEWilco writes "Fungus growths have been found in many extreme environments, including the Chernobyl reactor walls. Some fungi have been found whose growth is enhanced by radiation. I wonder if someone saved samples of the MIR-eating fungi."
not an extreme environment you insensitive clod
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Eventually, the bacteria will evolve into this.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Radiation is eating Fungi? I think you might have wanted: "Radiation-eating Fungi," especially in a headline. Consider: "Insect eating plants."
This is a huge crisis. If radiation keeps eating fungi at this rate we'll have no mushrooms left by 2040!
You shouldn't talk about Ballmer like that...he's likely to throw a chair or something.
I'M IN UR REACTOR EATIN UR FUELZ! Now to be serious, radiation resistant bacteria are also known. If mankind ever wipes itself out with nukes, it's comforting to know the world won't be a totally dead place. Everything will start all over, and who knows what will happen next time.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
Remember, Chernobyl was in Soviet Russia.
paintball
First off, IAAMP (I am a medical physicsist). This is sort of radiation-induced growth stimulus was actually studied extensively in the first half of the 20th century. A great reference for this behavior is a paper published in Human & Experimental Toxicology called "Radiation hormesis: its historical foundations as a biological hypothesis" by Calbrese and Baldwin, which examines the dozens of studies examining the effects of low dose radiation on plants, fungi, and insects - fascinating stuff. Over 2/3 of the studies in this time period showed increased growth with radiation, while the other 1/3 used relatively high doses (which is known to have net detrimental effects). People were actually interested in putting radioactive isotopes in fertilizer to encourage crop growth, but results weren't great and the A-bomb happened... and we all know where the public's perception of radiation went after that. I've got a PDF of that paper if anyone is interested (the online version requires a subscription, I believe).
so if i don't shower, that means i will be saved from this horrible cell phone and wifi radiation i keep hearing about?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pshaw. They got nothing on fat, italian plumbers.
Hopscotch - an online comic.
The link for mir-eating fungi goes to an old slashdot story which itself points to a dead link. A usable link to the original story is here: http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungu s_000727.html
Will I turn into Fungus-man? Or will I suddenly grow twice my size? Or will I get an extra life?
From the article:
"Irradiated melanin manifested a 4-fold increase in its capacity to reduce NADH relative to non-irradiated melanin."
Sorry! NADH is the reduced form, NAD+ is the oxidized form. NAD+ can be reduced to NADH. NADH can't be further reduced by organisms.
I'll leave it to others to find the additional flaws.
Radioactive isotopes can emit alpha particles, which are helium nuclei, beta particles, which are an electron emitted from the nucleus when a neutron changes into a proton and an electron, or gamma particles (more accurately rays) which have no mass or charge and are a form of electromagnetic radiation. The closest thing to what you are suggesting would be an ionized hydrogen atom, which is simply a proton. This, however, is not a form of radiation; it's just, well, hydrogen.
I for one welcome our new mutant fungi overlords.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
I doubt it's possible to get living organisms to shorten the half-life of radioactive materials, but fungi that abosrb radioactive materials can be very useful. When radioactive waste contaminates the ground, fungi can extract and concentrate it. The mushrooms can then be harvested for disposal as radioactive waste, leaving the soil in the area less radioactive. Paul Stamets describes it in Mycelium Running (there're good facts in between the hippie/druggie/mystical stuff) describing this and other similar applications of fungi as "mycoremediation".
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.
This is not "radiation eating", this is "radiation enabling".
Eating radiation implies that the radiation is removed or converted. There is no mention of that.
That's the same like saying "solar rays eating fungi discovered".
As the name could show you, it's a physicist (someone with a PhD in physics) working in the medical fields (his colleagues are MD, just like me).
There's a field of medicine where we needs the a lot, for exemple : the nuclear medicine.
High radiations are something that kills, as the MP said before. Therefor they can be focalised and targeted to kill cancer cells (Yes. Friking "nucular death rays" !
It's the physicist's job to design the model that the software use to predict how to irradiate the targeted tumor without irradiating too much neighboring healthy organs. It's also he's who is in charge of the callibration of the machine etc.
Other example : low-level radiation are mostly harmless. but they can be detected. Thus there's a whole class of examinations that can be done by ingesting/inhalating/injecting some radioactive material, and then make pictures/filming the radioactive emission to 'see' where the radioactive product went (for exemple using a radioactive gaz, to see how gaz circulated inside the lung. That's part of an examination called "pulmonary scintigraphy"). The doctor is mostly only taking care to read and interpret the produced pictures. Almost everything else (production of radioactive material, machine callibration, etc.) is supervised by physicists (and the actual manual job done by technicians).
etc.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Before you know it there'll be a big forest of this stuff emitting deadly lung-rotting spores, and the forest will be home to a legion of giant, deadly, and extremely vindictive insects...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand