Mushrooms ate my models!

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**Necros**

Not quite, but I thought this was interesting

http://mashable.com/2012/03/07/plastic-eating-fungi/

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically, a unique observation among reported PUR biodegradation activities.

Polyurethane is a big part of our mounting waste problem and this is a new possible solution for managing it. The fungi can survive on polyurethane alone and is uniquely able to do so in an oxygen-free environment. The Yale University team has published its findings in the article ‘Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi’ for the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal.

**deathholydeath**

That's pretty awesome, actually. It could really reduce the amount of garbage (literally) in our dumps.

**BlapBlapBlap**

So, wait, Orks will IRL be fungus?

**AlmightyWalrus**

It could be a very important discovery for the environment, but people won't like it when they [the fungi] inevitably spread out of the system and eats their [people's] stuff.

The discovery also illustrates why ravaging the rain forests is a bad idea.

**English Assassin**

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest

Evidently standards at Yale are slipping.

**Palindrome**

English Assassin wrote:
A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest

Evidently standards at Yale are slipping.

?

**English Assassin**

Palindrome wrote:
English Assassin wrote:
A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest

Evidently standards at Yale are slipping.

?

a fungi

**deathholydeath**

He means it should be "a fungus" not "a fungi" as fungi is plural of fungus.

**rubiksnoob**

And those poor undergrads will get zero acknowledgement while their professor will be hailed as the savior of mankind. Such is the way of academia.

**Palindrome**

deathholydeath wrote:He means it should be "a fungus" not "a fungi" as fungi is plural of fungus.

Thats incredibly pedantic. In my experience fungi is used as a singualar at least as often as fungus (I'm a microbiologist although admittedly not a mycologist).

**Hordini**

English Assassin wrote:
A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest

Evidently standards at Yale are slipping.

To be fair, the Yale students didn't write the article.

**Avatar 720**

Palindrome wrote:
deathholydeath wrote:He means it should be "a fungus" not "a fungi" as fungi is plural of fungus.

Thats incredibly pedantic. In my experience fungi is used as a singualar at least as often as fungus (I'm a microbiologist although admittedly not a mycologist).

How? 'Fungus' is the singular and 'fungi' is the plural, there are no two-ways about it; fungi cannot ever be correctly used as the singular. There's nothing pedantic about pointing out a blatant error.

**Palindrome**

Except that in practice the terms are effectively interchangable with fungi being a lot more common than fungus. When was the last time you heard someone use 'bacterium'? This is language evolution in action.

**Tibbsy**

Hordini wrote:
English Assassin wrote:
A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest

Evidently standards at Yale are slipping.

To be fair, the Yale students didn't write the article.

Hordini said it before I did. Don't blame the students, blame the journalist.

Or, I don't know... Blame the victim...

But I don't know if there is a victim here...

On topic: Interesting.. It's use would have to be controlled, as we don't want it on all the plastics still in use, but it would definitely reduce the amount waste on landfill... Another point raised on that page is what does it give off? Gas wise, like CO2 or Methane? That would be something that would need to be taken into account where this could be used

**Avatar 720**

I have never heard 'a fungi' being more common than 'a fungus'; what sort of evidence are you basing this assumption on?

The entire point was that 'A fungi' is incorrect, thus his post was not in any way pedantic. You seem to be missing this point.

As for the 'bacterium' issue, whenever they put the letter 'a' in front of it; but since referring to a single bacterium is a rare thing to do, what with their division and multiplication making it essentially useless for day-to-day life, 'bacteria' is heard more often, although it correctly refers to more than one bacterium.

I could ask you when the last time you heard someone say 'a fungi' was, but that would depend heavily upon where you are, what you do, who you socialise with and so on, and the results would be anecdotal at best; just as they are with 'bacterium'.

Anyway, the point was that pointing out incorrect grammar in a public publication is not pedantic if it's blatantly true; let's not try and turn this into a Grammar Nazi convention because things managed to escalate.

**Palindrome**

Avatar 720 wrote:I have never heard 'a fungi' being more common than 'a fungus'; what sort of evidence are you basing this assumption on?

Professional experience. As I said I am a microbiologist and even though I don't work with fungi all that much I do come into semi regular contact with them and they are almost universally described as fungi, if they aren't broken down further. I can't actually remember anyone using fungus in a professional sense. I have never met a dedicated mycologist though I doubt that they would use fungus anymore than I do.

As for the 'bacterium' issue, whenever they put the letter 'a' in front of it; but since referring to a single bacterium is a rare thing to do, what with their division and multiplication making it essentially useless for day-to-day life, 'bacteria' is heard more often, although it correctly refers to more than one bacterium.

The same can be said here as micro-ogranisms are very rarely referred to as a singular.

**Avatar 720**

Look, if you want to use 'fungi' as meaning both singular and plural, be my guest; you'll be grammatically incorrect, but be my guest anyway.

I've made my point, restated my point, and made it clear that I don't want to derail the thread further by branching out into general grammar Nazism.

The fact that you omitted the part where I reference my point in your reply tells me that you're just looking for an argument, and i'm not going to be the one giving it to you.

For the sake of trying one last time to bring this thing to a calm close, I will re-restate my point: The point was that pointing out incorrect grammar in a public publication is not pedantic if it's blatantly true. 'A fungi' is incorrect, thus his post was not in any way pedantic. You seem to be missing this entirely.

**Palindrome**

Avatar 720 wrote:Look, if you want to use 'fungi' as meaning both singular and plural, be my guest; you'll be grammatically incorrect, but be my guest anyway
For the sake of trying one last time to bring this thing to a calm close, I will re-restate my point: The point was that pointing out incorrect grammar in a public publication is not pedantic if it's blatantly true. 'A fungi' is incorrect, thus his post was not in any way pedantic. You seem to be missing this entirely.

While my point is that it isn't blatantly true, 50 years ago it would have been but not today. This is why I was confused about the original post, I couldn't see anything wrong, especially as this would have been copied froma press release issued by a scientific instituion.

**master of ordinance**

While i admit that this could be a major relief to our waste disposal problems as with many attempts to import forigen biology to solve problems this will invetably result in an outbreak of plastic eating fungus. Just imagine this getting into your local GW......

**Palindrome**

To be honest a similar fungus (

) may well exist here already, we just haven't noticed that particular property yet.

**Necros**

Let's just say Funguses from now on. It sounds funner anyway.

**treadhead1944**

master of ordinance wrote:While i admit that this could be a major relief to our waste disposal problems as with many attempts to import forigen biology to solve problems this will invetably result in an outbreak of plastic eating fungus. Just imagine this getting into your local GW......

How do we know that the fungus wasn't bio-engineered by GW to boost sales? Who's fun now, guy?

**Bakerofish**

so thats whats been causing all those holes...