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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It turns out morel mushrooms and real estate have something in common.
Location, location, location is the golden rule for buying or selling a home as much as it is for morels — the elusive and prized edible variety of mushroom that often grows in the same place every year and, according to a fungus expert, can be potentially dangerous depending on where you pick them.
Morels are brown, black or yellow and have elongated caps with a ridged and pitted appearance that resembles a honeycomb. With a strong and distinct flavour, they're prized by chefs and amateur cooks alike for their ability to bring new life to dishes.
For those in the know, places where morels grow are closely guarded secrets. For the uninitiated, finding them while out on a walk in the woods is rare, according to Andrew Murray, an amateur naturalist who often spends his free time admiring the beauty of nature.
"I just take pictures and leave them be," he said, noting he's never eaten one. "They're quite rare in my experience. I see maybe one every few years. The last one was in 2021."
The mushroom's elusive nature and coveted status might be why people seem to be so keen to put pictures of them online every spring.
Over the past few weeks, morel hunters across Canada have been posting their hauls to social media groups — from a lonesome mushroom plucked from the lawn by a suburban dad, to morels gathered by the dozen, harvested from a top-secret hunting ground.
Murray doesn't eat them because there are false morels out there and, as he puts it, "I don't trust my fungal identification skills."
False morels can cause severe illness and, in rare cases, death if ingested, according to the UBC Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver.
The good news is spotting the difference between a false morel and a real one is relatively easy, said Greg Thorn, a biology professor at Western University in London, Ont., who studies fungus.
"The false morel looks more like the brain on a stick than a honeycomb, so it has quite a different morphology," he said, noting, "'false morel' is just called that because they occur at the same season in the spring when there's not very many other mushrooms out there."
Thorn said the most important consideration for morel hunters is where they harvest their mushrooms. Morels have a tendency to absorb and concentrate toxins found in their environments, according to research.
"They're renowned for taking up toxins in the soil, including metals like lead, or cadmium or arsenic." He noted that while abandoned apple orchards are prime locations for morel hunting, they should be avoided because of the historical reliance on arsenic-based pesticides on apple crops.
A 2010 study found concentrations of lead and arsenic in morel mushrooms harvested from a former apple orchard in New Jersey; a 2018 study found concentrations of radionucleides from wild mushrooms gathered in Chornobyl, the site of an accident at its nuclear power plant in 1986.
Thorn said mushrooms are the fruiting body of a much larger organism that lives underground, a vast hidden network of filaments and threads that take nutrients from soil or a rotten log.
"Fungi, for whatever reason, we don't know why they don't discriminate between compounds they do need and compounds they don't need, like a radioactive cesium," Thorn said. "They're very, very good at concentrating these compounds.
"You really don't want to be eating a dinner of radioactive cesium or arsenic."
It's why Thorn recommends sticking to conservation areas or parks to gather mushrooms and to avoid areas that are known to be polluted, such as abandoned apple orchards or brownfield sites.
Thorn said that given the early spring, it's likely this year's morel season will stretch well into May, meaning the mushrooms could continue to sprout until Mother's Day on May 12.
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Results over 12 weeks of treatment, with standard error (SE) | TF3+ EM, ≥ 50% reduction in MMDs | TF3+ CM, ≥ 30% reduction in MMDs | TF3+ CM, ≥ 50% reduction in MMDs (scenario) |
---|---|---|---|
Responder rate, BSC, % | 9.6 (2.0) | 23.2 (4.6) | 8.9 (1.8a) |
Responder rate, eptinezumab 100mg, % | 40.0 (8.0) | 63.4 (12.9) | 30.4 (6.1a) |
Change from baseline in MMDs, BSC responders | -5.82 (1.50) | -8.80 (1.99) | -10.45 (1.41) |
Change from baseline in MMDs, eptinezumab 100 mg responders | -6.82 (0.92) | -9.93 (1.41) | -12.68 (1.40) |
Change from baseline in MMDs, BSC non-responders | -1.31 (0.84) | -0.85 (1.42) | -1.94 (0.96) |
Change from baseline in MMDs, eptinezumab 100 mg non-responders | -1.39 (1.18) | -1.71 (2.28) | -4.52 (1.17) |
MANILA (AP) — Southeast Asia was coping with a weekslong heat wave on Monday as record-high temperatures led to school closings in several countries and urgent health warnings throughout the region.
Millions of students in all public schools across the Philippines were ordered to stay home Monday after authorities canceled in-person classes for two days. The main advice for everyone, everywhere has been to avoid outdoor activities and drink plenty of water, but the young and the elderly were told to be especially careful.
Cambodia this year is facing the highest temperatures in 170 years, Chan Yutha, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology, told The Associated Press on Monday. His agency has forecast that temperatures in most parts of the country could reach up to 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) this week.
Myanmar’s meteorological department said Monday that seven townships in the central Magway, Mandalay, Sagaing and Bago regions experienced record-high temperatures. Several towns in Myanmar last week were on lists of the hottest spots worldwide.
Chauk township in Magway, historically the country’s hottest region, saw Myanmar’s highest temperature at 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record of 47.4 degrees Celsius (117.3 degrees Fahrenheit) set in 1968.
WATCH: A Brief But Spectacular take on giving climate activism a shot
The Philippines is among the nations worst affected by the sweltering weather in Southeast Asia, where the intense tropical summer heat worsened by humidity forced class cancellations in recent weeks and sparked fears of water shortages, power outages and damage to agricultural crops.
The Department of Education ordered students in more than 47,000 public schools to switch to home-based and online learning due to health risks from record-high temperatures and a three-day strike starting Monday by drivers who oppose a government program they fear would remove dilapidated passenger jeepneys from streets.
Large crowds have sought relief in air-conditioned shopping malls in Metropolitan Manila, the congested capital region of more than 14 million people where the temperature soared to 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.84 Fahrenheit) Saturday, surpassing the record set decades ago, according to weather officials.
In Thailand, temperatures have topped 44 C (111 F) in some areas in the northern parts of the country, while the capital Bangkok and metropolitan areas have seen temperatures go above 40 C (104 F). The forecast from the Meteorological Department said this year’s summer, which usually lasts from late February to late May, is expected to be 1-2 degrees hotter than last year, and rainfall will be lower than average.
Thailand’s Department of Disease Control said last week that at least 30 people have died from heatstroke so far this year, compared to 37 for all of last year.
Scientists have said the number of heat-related deaths around the world has been rising significantly in recent years along with temperatures, but the trend in Asia this year so far is unclear, partly because of the question of how to classify deaths that appear to be heat related.
At least 34 people have fallen ill due to the extreme heat in the Philippines so far this year, including six who died. The Department of Health said it was verifying what exactly caused the deaths.
Media in Bangladesh reported that in a five-day period earlier this month, at least 20 people died from heatstroke.
In Cambodia, however, officials indicated there were few if any heat-related fatalities. The Khmer Times, an online news platform, quoted the head of the Health Department of Phnom Penh, the capital, saying there had been no heat-related deaths or collapses.
Associated Press writers Sopheng Cheang in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.
This is a stupid conversation! and I’m not going to continue it!
literally so fucking correctWhat I’m really proud of is the fact that he made SURE the audience understood why the caller was being an idiot. He made a PERFECT comparison, gave the caller an honest chance to re-evaluate and change his mind. His point landed, everyone knew it, even the caller (note his pause and almost hesitancy after being asked).
But when the caller decided to bulldoze on anyway, because god forbid actually listen to the other person in the conversation, the expert cut him off and refused his time. And good for him.
[VD: A tweet by @ g33kgurli, tweeted at 9:47 PM on Dec 17, 2021. It reads, “Perhaps the best clap back to antivaxxers and antimaskers.” Attached is a video from The Thom Hartmann Program, where Hartmann is talking with a caller. The conversation goes as follows:
Caller: Hey Thom. Uh, I was listening to you for the last hour so, um, I heard survival of the fittest. Um, you know some of us choose not to vaccinate and uh–
Hartmann: You’re nuts, Nicholas.
Caller: –because we work very hard about staying fit, eating healthy, and our natural immune system.
Hartmann: So Nicholas if you’re so healthy, would you have unprotected sex with somebody who has syphilis or gonorrhea?
Caller: You’re missing the point.
Hartmann: No, I’m not missing the point. They’re contagious diseases. Would you have unprotected sex with somebody who has syphilis and gonorrhea and not worry about it because you’re so healthy?
Caller: [pause] No, I wouldn’t do that.
Hartmann: Okay, then why would you expose yourself to covid without having some protection?
Caller: Because the protection is my natural immunity.
Hartmann: No, it’s not. Tell that–
Caller: Yes, yes, my natural immune system–
Hartmann: Tell that to eight hundred thousand dead Americans. Nicholas, this is- this is a stupid conversation and I’m not going to continue it.
/end VD]
Everyone who’s ever died of a disease had an immune system