Zombie ant fungus, meet the anti-zombie-ant fungus

A new study has found that a zombifying ant fungus can be kept at bay by another pathogen.

It turns out that it takes a fungus to control one.

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For the first time, researchers have discovered how an ant colony can survive an onslaught of zombie-fungus, also known as Ophiocordyceps, a behavior altering, deadly parasite.

Ophiocordyceps enters an ant's brain, causing it to march to its death at a mass grave. Once the ant is dead, the fungus produces more infectious spores.

In their new study, David Hughes, an entomologist at Penn State and his team describe a hyperparasitic fungus ? that is, a parasitic fungus that exploits another parasitic fungus ? that helps ants to ward off a zombie epidemic.

"In a case where biology is stranger than fiction, the parasite of the zombie-ant fungus is itself a fungus," Hughes said in a statement.

Ants are the dominant creature of all land-based ecosystems. In tropical forests, for example, almost 70% of individual insects are ants. They provide ample opportunities for scientific investigation.

Previous research has shown that ants groom each other and themselves to defend their colonies against pathogens such as fungi.

Hughes and his group modeled ant behavior in order to see grooming's effect on restricting infection. They found that combined with the ant's own grooming practices, the hyperparasitic fungus significantly limited the spread of the deadly, zombifying Ophiocordyceps.

Many ants become infected with the Ophiocordyceps fungus because it grows slowly, producing immature spores for about a month after killing its host.

However, the likelihood of an individual ant becoming a zombie is relatively low because the young spores are susceptible to the hyperparasitic fungus.

"Because the hyperparasitic fungi prevents the infected zombie-ant fungus from spreading spores, fewer of the ants will become zombies," explained Hughes.

The new study is available online in PLoS ONE.

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Nintendo patent application lends a look at Wii U's core technology, add-ons too

Little did we know that, just two months after we were trying the Wii U for ourselves, Nintendo was busy patenting nearly everything its unique game console would have to offer. A pair of just-published US Patent Office applications filed last August get into the nuts and bolts of how the controller and the legacy Wii remote will play with the new device. It's clear that the patent work had started before Nintendo had redesigned the main system -- the box at the center of the patents looks like the existing Wii -- but it does show the nitty-gritty of things we only saw at last year's Nintendo E3 keynote, such as the gun attachment or playing golf with a combination of the Wii U controller and the traditional Wiimote. Nintendo also gave itself some wiggle room on the controller's screen size: although the LCD is officially 6.2 inches across, the patent allows that it might be "5 inches or larger." We're wondering how much of the overall look and technology will survive through to the finished Wii U design's unveiling at this year's E3. For now, though, you can explore the patents yourself at the links below.

Nintendo patent application lends a look at Wii U's core technology, add-ons too originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 00:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers make an RGB laser with a regular laser and quantum dots

The problem with lasers is, they tend to generate just a single color or light.To get more than one hue requires actually combining more than one type of laser to produce red, green and blue. But researchers at Brown University have figured out a solution to creating small RGB lasers by using colloidal quantum dots, or CQDs. The idea of leveraging the properties of the thin film isn't new, but past attempts to use CQDs in semiconductor lasers have failed because the necessary energy tends to wind up as heat instead of light. The work around scientists found was to excite the various dot sizes with a laser then filter out original light source. Unfortuneately, the solution is far from practical for use in commercial products, but it does represent a milestone in the march towards a single-material multi-wavelength laser. For more details check out the source link.

Researchers make an RGB laser with a regular laser and quantum dots originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 May 2012 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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