[HN Gopher] Bioluminescent wood using the white rot fungus desar...
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Bioluminescent wood using the white rot fungus desarmillaria
tabescens
Author : gnabgib
Score : 126 points
Date : 2024-12-02 19:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
| fallinditch wrote:
| I wasn't aware that rotting wood could be bioluminescent until I
| saw it myself one night during a walk in the woods. I was
| familiar with the terrain which enabled me to navigate at night
| without torchlight. My eyes were accustomed to the dark, I
| wouldn't have spotted it otherwise. On seeing the mysterious glow
| I turned on my torch to inspect - it was an oak branch tinged
| with a characteristic blue color, and very wet, the texture of
| the wood was very soft. Location: Surrey, UK.
| dekhn wrote:
| I used to have extremely good dark adaptation and was able to
| navigate trails in pitch-dark (no moon) nights, by looking away
| (the sides of your vision are more sensitive to faint light)
| and sort of defocusing... I'd see the shape of the trail
| glowing slightly, and I believe it was bits of overturned wood
| that had been rotting.
|
| It's really subtle. Would only notice it on completely dark
| nights entirely away from any light sources, and even then,
| only on trails that had been recently traversed.
| com2kid wrote:
| Night vision is one of the things I miss most about being
| really young.
|
| Driving at night used to be fun! And I was easily able to
| walk around in near pitch black.
|
| Plenty other things can be maintained with good health and
| exercise, but night vision isn't ever coming back. :(
| dekhn wrote:
| Yeah, I'm 52 and at some point in the last ten years, night
| driving became really painful. I don't know how much of it
| is due to my eyes changing, versus "improvements" in
| headlights (of oncoming traffic; I notice that old lights
| have a nice warm dim yellow, while newer lights tend to be
| a bright cold white). or from grease on my inner windshield
| :(.
|
| But yeah, it totally turns what used to be a routine and
| relaxing process into an exercise into "is that a tree or a
| person dressed in dark clothing?"
| qup wrote:
| I don't think this is exactly what you're talking about,
| but thought I'd drop a hint for anyone struggling with
| twilight driving:
|
| Use your visor to block out the sky. It's brighter than
| the road part of the scene, and it forces your eyes to
| pick the wrong "exposure." Blocking it helps quite a bit.
| theturtle32 wrote:
| Similarly, if you've had LASIK and struggle with halos
| and starbursts around taillights and headlights, try
| increasing the brightness of your instrument panel. It
| will cause your irises to close in response to the
| brighter light, which allows less light in through the
| uncorrected area of your corneas. Basically: in LASIK
| surgery they only apply correction to the very center
| area of your cornea, and the more your irises open, the
| more of those higher order aberrations you will see.
| mc3301 wrote:
| Interesting. I had "S.M.I.L.E" surgery about 8 years ago,
| and I find the opposite to be better for me. At night, I
| dim my instrument panel to as dark as possible.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It isn't necessarily your eyesight.
|
| I'm in my 30s and have great eyesight and have noticed
| that with vehicles getting taller (especially trucks) and
| lights getting much brighter that oncoming traffic can
| really shine right into your eyes and make driving at
| night a pain. I'm convinced it's entirely a problem of
| our own fault that really impacts drivers of normal cars.
| fallinditch wrote:
| When walking in woodland at night in very dark conditions
| without a torch, another good technique is to look up at the
| shape of the tree branches silhouetted against the sky - you
| can often discern where the trail goes.
| tomcam wrote:
| I mean Surrey borders on magical as it is... Love that place
| n4r9 wrote:
| > My eyes were accustomed to the dark, I wouldn't have spotted
| it otherwise.
|
| Funny you say that; my partner is a mycologist and her reaction
| to the linked article was that the luminescence is typically
| too weak to be very noticeable or useful.
| yarg wrote:
| My favourite story about bioluminescence is "angel's glow" in the
| civil war.
|
| A bioluminescent microbe colonised the wounds of civil war
| soldiers, beating out pathogens and preventing sepsis.
|
| https://www.utmb.edu/mdnews/podcast/episode/glowing-wounds
| pomian wrote:
| What a great link. Thankyou. There is still so much to learn
| from the microbiome. Working with contaminated sites, I have
| seen bacterial adaptations to the most l nastiest sites, almost
| always improving the toxicity of the soil. (There are rare
| exceptions.)
| yarg wrote:
| Thanks, but it really wasn't - it was just the least shit of
| the top five results for "civil war bioluminescence".
|
| I'd much prefer a more scientific article, especially one
| that delves into the (let's say) caste system of the bacteria
| - where one of it's developmental forms is symbiotic with a
| nematode (?) worm, and the other colonises plant roots.
|
| I'm guessing it was more than likely the plant root form
| (resident in forest soil) rather than the worm gut symbiote -
| I doubt they'd've ended up calling it "angel's glow" if the
| soldiers wounds had been wriggling.
|
| The other thing that puts me off is that it's one of a
| general class of fawning article about high schoolers, when
| (for one reason or another) what the child did wasn't really
| that impressive.
|
| In this case because her mother clearly did her homework for
| her.
|
| Edit:
|
| Plant roots:
| https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/aem.00891-20
|
| Nematodes: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Devang-
| Upadhyay/publica...
| blincoln wrote:
| Unfortunately, that story is likely a hoax/urban legend.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/26/angels-glow-civil-war...
| akanet wrote:
| I'm growing panellum stipticus on some wood and rice right now.
| The glow is very faint but quite satisfying to perceive. I hope
| to make a nice nightlight out of it
| VierScar wrote:
| What do you mean by "on" rice? On the living plant? Or you mean
| it's growing in a jar of rice?
|
| A bioluminescent wood nightlight sounds amazing, surely someone
| sells them
| dekhn wrote:
| https://www.instructables.com/Growing-Mushrooms-With-Rice/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I have four bioluminescent petunia houseplants above my bed
| for that.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| I was curious, and here is a video of the product (not
| trying to push marketing).
|
| https://youtu.be/iaE7EsW-x_A?feature=shared&t=98
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Those are the ones. They're awesome. I put one in a clear
| pot and the roots glow.
| https://www.instagram.com/ceejayoz/p/C8_Dgqvuq2C/
| AyyEye wrote:
| Rice (flour) is a common substrate to grow mushrooms. Make
| sterilized/hydrated rice cake and inject some spores into it.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Imagine emergency lighting, that just glows for month, all it
| takes is some accumulator dust- solar sell, capacitor, piezzo
| crystal, giving the wood dust a regular stir in a bottle garden.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Another 'usefull' rot is what forms the incense Agarwood, popular
| in arab and asian culture, where a certain type of forrest/jungle
| tree is infected and, after 50yrs, results in the highly sought
| after perfume that can run you in the tens of thousands $ per kg.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| > Unlocking the mechanisms behind fungal bioluminescence could
| provide an electricity free light-source for the future with a
| low energy requirement. A battery-free or plug-free sustainable
| light source based on bioluminescent fungi would be beneficial
| for the environment and help us meet net zero targets in line
| with the IPCC synthesis report.[55] Utilizing bioluminescence to
| illuminate our homes and communities would result in energy
| savings and a reduction in CO2 emissions. The alternative light
| source would also reduce nighttime light pollution, a global
| concern in large cities. For example, bioluminescent wood was
| used to illuminate the compass and depth gauge of the first
| submarine, the Turtle, at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion.[56]
|
| Ctrl-F "efficien" => no search hits for efficient or efficiency.
| Is there any indication to believe these deeply multistep
| chemical processes to be more energetically efficient than modern
| electronics & LED's operated at similar radiant powers?
|
| Or is the idea that this can absorb clean wood waste streams? If
| so all these proposals will need a benefficiency coefficient:
| i.e. how much LCO energy saved by not simply letting wood rot,
| such that many competing ideas of what to do with "clean wood
| waste streams" can be compared; already lots of organic waste
| streams not digestible by humans or livestock are being
| intentionally digested by microbial organisms to extract useful
| protein suitable for livestock...
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(page generated 2024-12-03 23:02 UTC)