Notes of the Day

• Underwater mushrooms. Actual pic here on the cover of Mycologia.
• This is an interesting story about another problem with physicians prescribing drugs their patients do not need (or maybe its more about advertisers convincing patients they need something they don't. Basically, if you give a drug to people who don't really need it, and then you test its effectiveness, it isn't going to show up as very effective. Really, this is just homeopathy in the guise of legitimate medicine.
• The story about Macho B's death in Arizona (apparently the first jaguar confirmed in the U.S. in years) is a little confusing. Here is the Arizona Game and Fish Department's official story: They did nothing wrong. This is a federal species, however, and the feds disagree. If the feds decide to pursue legal action, the Arizona G&F is going to have a severe headache. The weird part to all that: Reading between the lines, the USFWS decided to completely abandon the Jaguars during the Bush presidency.
• Nobody likes to turn lakes into algal bowls. Turns out another reason (that is probably obvious) is that the benthos of these eutrophied lakes becomes homogeneous.
• Birth weights of babies have decreased over the last twenty years, a result that is so counter to conventional theory that one of the researchers is quoted as saying: "We tried really hard to explain it away, but we were unable to." (wonderful science, btw) My hypothesis: we're starting to see the cumulative effects of the myriad chemicals we're spewing into our food, water, and air.