Word: myco
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Nutty as "mycotecture" sounds, Ross may be onto something bigger than an art project. A promising start-up named Ecovative is building a 10,000-sq.-ft. (about 930 sq m) myco-factory in Green Island, N.Y. "We see this as a whole new material, a woodlike equivalent to plastic," says CEO Eben Bayer. The three-year-old company has been awarded grants from the EPA and the National Science Foundation, as well as the Department of Agriculture--because its mushrooms feast on empty seed husks from rice or cotton. "You can't even feed it to animals," says Bayer...
After the husks are cooked, sprayed with water and myco-vitamins and seeded with mushroom spores, the mixture is poured into a mold of the desired shape and left to grow in a dark warehouse. A week or two later, the finished product is popped out and the material rendered biologically inert. The company's first product, a green alternative to Styrofoam, is taking on the packaging industry. Called Ecocradle, it is set to be shipped around a yet-to-be-disclosed consumer item this spring...
...beauties of Ecocradle is that unlike Styrofoam--which is hard to recycle, let alone biodegrade--this myco-material can easily serve as mulch in your garden. Ecovative's next product, Greensulate, will begin targeting the home-insulation market sometime next year. And according to Bayer's engineering tests, densely packed mycelium is strong enough to be used in place of wooden beams. "It's not so far-out," he says of Ross's art house. So could Bayer see himself growing a mushroom house and living in it? "Well"--he hesitates--"maybe we'd start with a doghouse...
...them more vulnerable to TB infection, and because their crippled immune systems can no longer mount proper responses, H.I.V. patients infected with TB often don't produce the recognizable symptoms of the disease such as coughing or visible lesions on chest X-rays. Their abnormal immunity also renders the myco-bacterium difficult to detect in blood-based assays...
...Boston Mycological Club, the Oldest Amateur Mycological Club in North America, can help fungiphiles learn to grow their own yummy portabello and shitake `shrooms or get the more intrepid myco-hunter involved in local mushroom forays. Harvard students could benefit from a bit more savoir-faire. As June Beack `01 comments, "I think mushrooming would be a fun sport, what with the pigs and everything...
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