Link of the week- Drugs company ethics

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today's link is to an opinion piece on the ethics of drugs companies-specifically with regard to promoting pharmacological treatments for female sexual dysfunction (which generally responds very poorly to drug treatment)-

http://healthmad.com/mens-health/drugs-companies-and-the-battle-between-truth-and-marketing/

Link of the week- the beauty of fungi...

...may sound like a contradiction in terms, but as these stunning photographs show, just because an organism lives on the forest floor, is almost entirely composed of tiny white tubes and feeds on rotting organic material, doesn't mean it can't be beautiful...

The first link is to a picture called “Decomposition on the forest floor” by James Milligan -
http://www.naturescapes.net/portfolios/displayimage.php?pos=-2445

The second link leads to “Fungal Abstract” by Craig Lipski-
http://www.naturescapes.net/portfolios/displayimage.php?pos=-4801

Today's third link - “Mushroom” by Ken Kovak - demonstrates the slow power of fungi - as we see a group of tree fungi slowly prizing the bark off a tree-
http://www.naturescapes.net/portfolios/displayimage.php?pos=-19696

Today's final link is a slightly more off-the-wall ("less on-the-wall"?) kind of "fungal art" for want of a better word- one of a number of similar pieces by Bristol-based artist ElinTM
http://elintm.blogspot.com/2010/04/pincushions.html

Link of the week- the perils of tea drinking...

Hi.
Welcome to Weirdbeautiful. Today's links-of-the-week are two articles relaying scientific research about the perils of tea-drinking and the benefits of coffee drinking (rather than the other way around, for a change).

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100622/thl-coffee-may-protect-against-cancer-d831572.html

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100617/thl-tea-risk-for-rheumatoid-arthritis-d831572.html

Link of the week- acupuncture and adenosine

Hi. Welcome to weirdbeautiful.

First link-of-the-week today is (again) to a medical, rather than a wildlife story. This article talks about research into how/if acupuncture works, concluding that acupuncture needles release adenosine (a compound known to reduce inflammation and pain) into the tissue around the needles. I don't know enough about the subject to comment on this, but I thought it was/is an interesting story -
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100530/thl-acupuncture-relief-link-identified-d831572.html

The second link is both weird and beautiful- a micrographic image of daisy pollen-
http://www.micronaut.ch/popup/show/15/137

(actually, this one image in a gallery of pollen images)