Word: fungal
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...other creations of the human hand, it is a patrimony not of any one country or culture, but of humankind as a whole. Yet Lascaux's robust longevity belies a frightening fragility. Five years ago, after the ill-conceived installation of new climatic equipment, Lascaux suffered an outbreak of fungal infection that threatened to destroy in a few years what thousands of millenniums had left largely unscathed. The cave's custodians are still struggling to eradicate this scourge. Since a journalist from French science magazine La Recherche was allowed into the cave three years ago, there has been no independent...
...year endangered the cave; it reopened in 1982 with a limit of 8,000 annual visitors. Altamira, too, constructed a replica of part of the cave as a diversion for tourists barred entry to the real thing, and in 2002 - a year after Lascaux was hit by fungal infection - the original Altamira cave was shut down again. "There was no evident problem, but we needed better instruments to monitor the cave's conditions," says Lasheras. "In another two years, we'll reopen it again, but only to the extent that the scientists consider safe." Niaux, on the northern slopes...
...with neural-tube defects (NTDs) in unborn children. Often debilitating and sometimes fatal, NTDs such as anencephaly and spina bifida have been linked directly to the tortillas and other corn products in the diets of expectant mothers living along the Rio Grande. Missmer and her associates isolated fumonsin, a fungal toxin often found in American corn crops, as the likely cause of these infants’ cranial and spinal malformations. The study, conducted on mothers of babies born from the early 1990s to 2000, determined that overexposure to fumonsin inhibits fetal ability to absorb folic acid, a compound known...
...chytrid fungus--that attacks their skin. The chytrid is actually a cool-weather organism, doing best at temperatures from 63°F to 77°F. Paradoxically, an effect of global warming is to increase cloud cover in the tropical forests, lowering daytime temperatures and making the frogs more vulnerable to fungal assault...
...many foodies, white truffles might as well be gold. These clumps of fungal fruit grow in the damp crevasses beneath oak trees in only a few places on earth. They are extremely rare and cannot be cultivated. They also stir the hearts of many chefs and can cost a small fortune to purvey. If you want to see for yourself the land of the truffle hunter, then take a plane to the Italian region of Piedmont in the Langhe hills. Alba, a two-hour drive north from Milan, is considered the spiritual city of the treasure, and prime truffle time...