Fungi come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and their range of habits and habitats is just as diverse.

It's fungi's ability to grow just about anywhere that makes it so amazing. If you name a hostile environment there's more than likely some form of mushroom or yeast that will not only grow there but prefer it over anywhere else. An extreme version of this is when researchers stuck their instruments into one of the most poisonous places on earth and found not only a species of mushroom growing there but one that actually appears to be feeding on the toxicity. How nasty is this place? Well, all you need to say is one word to shudder at the thought: Chernobyl.

But strangeness and fungi don't end with radiation-feasting mushrooms, for there are quite a number of them that feast on other things -- including animals. Nematophagous fungi, for instance, grow miniscule rings that, if a nematode happens to squirm into one, rapidly contract, trapping the unfortunate lunch ... I mean 'worm.' If this makes you a bit nervous take a bit of consolation in that the popular oyster mushroom is also a nematode killer – and it's also tasty, so while it eats them we also eat it.

See some beautiful and scary fungi at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Lebrac)

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is a continuation of the popular TypeFace/Off series in which you identify something by its distinctive font. We've tried movies, TV shows, board games, and now video games. Can you recognize them from the typeface, even if the actual words are different? Link

An experiment using the hallucinogen psilocybin on terminally ill cancer patients found that it helped to ease their anxiety.

The study included 12 patients who took a small dose of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- while under the supervision of trained therapists. In a separate session, the participants took a placebo pill, which had little effect on their symptoms.

By contrast, one to three months after taking psilocybin the patients reported feeling less anxious and their overall mood had improved. By the six-month mark, the group's average score on a common scale used to measure depression had declined by 30 percent, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

In follow-up interviews with the researchers, some patients said their experience with psilocybin gave them a new perspective on their illness and brought them closer to family and friends.

"We were pleased with the results," says the lead researcher, Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, in Torrance, Calif.

Another study using larger doses of the drug is planned. Link -via reddit

Howie Woo, whose whimsical crochet creations have been featured on Neatorama previously, was inspired to create this crocheted scene by a sad, strange news item from 2001. Shirley Stockdale of Cape Coral, Florida got her arm caught in a sofa bed and could not reach the telephone. She died two days later. Woo was haunted by the disturbing story, and crocheted Ms. Stockdale's last moment before the accident. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Edward Nino Hernandez of Bogota, Colombia has been named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. The 24-year-old Hernandez is 27 inches (70 cm) tall and weighs only 22 pounds. The previous record holder was He Pingping of China, who was slightly taller than Hernandez and died last March. Hernandez is currently working as a actor in a Colombian film in which he plays a "drug thug."

Doctors never could explain why Nino is so small, his parents say.

"They never gave us a diagnosis," his mother, Noemi Hernandez, said during an interview in the family's sparely furnished apartment in Bosa, a mostly poor district of southern Bogota.

Hernandez, 43, said Nino weighed just 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) at birth and was 15 inches (38 centimeters) long.

She said doctors at the National University studied him until he was 3, then lost interest. She and her husband, a security guard, lost a daughter who was similarly small in 1992 when she was about to complete a year of life.

The couple's youngest child, 11-year-old Miguel Angel, stands 37 inches (93 centimeters) tall and has facial features similar to Nino. The other three boys are of normal height and appearance.

"I feel happy because I'm unique," Nino said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Link

Remember Meowmania, the site that make our cats go crazy? The creator, Jacqueline Steck, is back with Birdmania, which you can click and click to make your home or office sound like an aviary. Link -via Metafilter

by Bethany Halford (“BH”) with an Introduction and Commentary
by Steve Nadis (“SN”) Followed by a Rejoinder by the Aforementioned BH

EDITOR’S NOTE: The unusual format and to some degree the content of this article, including personal and even interpersonal commentary, reflects the persistent, entangled nature of the subject.

Notes Of A Humble Grail Watcher Regarding New Hope On The Horizon, by Steve Nadis (“SN”)

For the past 15 years, I’ve been tilting at windmills bearing the name “Holy Grail”—words that are all too familiar in the scientific literature and other realms of hyperbolic prose. I have made it my life’s work to scour scientific periodicals for references to said term in order to show the extent to which it has been misused, overused, and abused, with the ultimate hope being that scientists and science journalists alike will show more restraint in the future when describing “revolutionary new breakthroughs” or lofty, elusive goals not yet attained.

This is not a field for those eager to get rich quick. There’s not much money to be had in the grail-hunting enterprise, nor much glory to be found either—except in extremely rarified circles among those in the know. Indeed, most civilians fail to recognize the value of my preoccupation, nor do they consider it a valid occupation or even an avocation.

For most of this time, it has been a solitary pursuit laced with private curses, ad hominem remarks (at my own expense), and self-congratulatory chuckles. I even dislocated my shoulder once patting myself on the back. Putting it in literary terms, I have been Don Quixote without Sancho Panza. In dance terms, I have been Fred Astaire without Ginger Rogers. And in terms of refreshing alcoholic beverages that are perfect for the casual get-together or formal office party, I have been Martini without Rossi. (Or Rowan without Martin, or Martin without Lewis, or Lewis without Clark).

But slowly things have been changing for the better, perhaps a result of frequent announcements regarding the grail in this very journal, the Annals itself.¹ They say it takes a village, and although a village is not taking shape here, a community is. In the past couple of years, it seems that some people are finally “getting it”—people like Charles Petit, who wrote in the Knight Science Journalism Tracker in 2007: “What is it with any and all holy grails as ever-potent catnip for metaphor-hungry science and medical writers? How is it that French poetry, British Arthurian literature, and the romance of knights off on quests—one that not even Monty Python’s satire could cure—took such deep root in the imaginations of some writers in their youths (and of their sources)?”

Petit’s tirade was spurred by a BBC news story that described the development of artificial blood vessels as “one of the holy grails of regenerative medicine.” Is it, Petit asked, “just one of several such grails? And this in just one subspecialty? Well, one takes one’s holy grails where one finds them. Somebody should do a survey. There must be scads of them. How many holy grails does it take to make them, you know, plain old grails?”²

In 2008, Guardian columnist Tim Radford wrote: “British journalists have invoked the holy grail more than 1,000 times in the last 12 months. I have, almost certainly, evoked the same divinely-touched chalice, rightly celebrated in Arthurian legend, in some inappropriate context. We are all guilty... Grail imagery occurs with astonishing frequency in the scholarly press. Somewhere in the medical literature, I suspect, lurks a paper about the holy grail of hip replacement.”³ (And, yes, Mr. Radford, you are correct. But there is not one paper about the holy grail of hip replacement, my cher comrade in arms. There are many.)

(YouTube link)

How do you make Star Wars prequels better... or at least more tolerable? Shorten them to six minutes altogether and put it behind a parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody". -via The Daily What

Isabella Blyth of Gorgie, Scotland turned 106 years old on Saturday. She looks much younger, and attributes her long and healthy life to the fact that she's never been romantically involved.

The plucky pensioner, who celebrates her birthday tomorrow, has no regrets about living a life of abstinence and in fact believes it has made her physically and mentally strong.

Miss Blyth's niece, Sheena Campbell, who visits her aunt a couple of times a week, said they would mark the day with a cake, champagne and a reminisce about the past.

She said: "Isa is an amazing character and you wouldn't believe she was 106.

"She says that she has never felt the need for a romance and has never had time for a man. She had a high-powered job as a private secretary with North British Distilleries, which meant she was always busy.

This reminds me of an old joke in which the punch line reads, "Why would you want to?" Link -via Arbroath

Etsy seller swelser creates custom wedding invitations and save the date cards made to resemble vintage comic book covers! You can picture yourself as not only soon-to-be-married, but as a crime fighting adventurer as well. Link -via Rue the Day

The use of Ms. as a title for a woman who is either married or not goes back a lot further than you may think. The Oxford University Press found an example printed in a newspaper in 1885.

Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.” The few early instances of “Ms.” carried no particular information about matrimonial status (it was used for single or for married women) and no political statement about gender equality. Eventually “Miss” and “Mrs.” emerged as the standard honorifics for women, just as “Mr.” was used for men (“Master,” from which “Mr.” derives, was often used for boys, though it’s not common today). While “Miss” was often prefixed to the names of unmarried women or used for young women or girls, it could also refer to married women. And “Mrs.,” typically reserved for married women, did not always signal marital status (for example, widows and divorced women often continued to use “Mrs.”). The spread of “Ms.” over the past forty years both simplifies and complicates the title paradigm.

But the term goes back even further, as Ms. was used on a tombstone in 1767 for Ms. Sarah Spooner, which may be a case of saving room. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

These parakeets belong to Inner Huckleberry, who submitted this rad photo to Cute Overload, where you can get a closer look. Link

The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Everyone fantasizes about accidentally uncovering a treasure. Pompeii and Herculaneum were such treasures. They existed for a thousand years until, in one brief moment, they disappeared. Here's the story of how they were lost... and found.

(Image credit: Flickr users Simon & Vicki)

VESUVIUS BLOWS

Two thousand years ago, the prosperous cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived near Rome, 10 miles from the foot of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. Vesuvius hadn't exploded for over 1,000 years; no one even knew it was a volcano. Then on August 24 in the year 79 A.D., it erupted, completely burying both cities under mountains of ash-Pompeii and Herculaneum were lost.

Mount Vesuvius continued to erupt sporadically over the centuries that followed, each time adding to the volcanic debris that covered the former town sites; each layer leaving the two cities more hidden than before. Four hundred years later, the Roman Empire collapsed, and legends about the two cities went with it. For 15 centuries, they lay forgotten and undisturbed, their stories untold.  Then clues about their existence began to turn up. For example, around 1594, a Roman architect named Domenico Fontana was digging a canal to supply water to a rich man's home when workmen uncovered pieces of ruined buildings and a few ancient coins. But nothing much came of the discovery.

RUMORS OF TREASURE

(Image credit: Flickr user Bill McIntyre)

In 1707 part of Italy came under Austrian rule, and Prince d'Elboeuf came to command the cavalry. He heard rumors of treasures being brought up from underground, so he promptly purchased a large parcel of land in the immediate vicinity. Over the next 30 year, he had shafts and tunnels dug and uncovered vases, statues, and even a number of polished marble slabs-once the floor of the theater in Herculaneum-all of which he used to decorate his villa.

Word of the prince's finds spread, and other treasure hunters came looking. When the first skeleton-complete with bronze and silver coins-was unearthed in 1748, treasure fever hit hard. For the next several years, artifacts were continually looted from the area. But it wasn't until 1763, when workers unearthed an inscription reading "res publica Pompeianorum"-meaning "the commonwealth of Pompeians"-that the ancient city was identified.

American comic books mostly concentrate on adventure, especially the adventures of super heroes. Japanese manga magazines, on the other hand, tackle a wide variety of subjects that you'd never expect to be shown in graphic form. The magazine called Young Jump published a manga version of the history of the Ig Nobel Prizes (covered previously at Neatorama). Only excerpts are online, and the text is in Japanese, but you can get a idea of how wacky the story is. The above panel shows one of the developers of the Bow-Lingual, a device that translates a dog's barks, accepting an Ig Nobel prize along with his son dressed as a dog. Link to part one; link to part two.

Have you ever seen a squirrel like this? You might, in the forests of India. This is Ratufa indica, or the Malabar Giant Squirrel. They grow up to 16 inches long, and that doesn't count the tail! Learn more about the Malabar Giant Squirrel at The Ark in Space. Link

(Image credit: Wikimedia user Bishancm)