Usually when it comes to growing mushrooms, the most important thing that you will need to begin with is the mushroom spawn itself - this is what the mushrooms grow from, so it is an essential ingredient. Without it, it would be like trying to grow an apple tree without the apple pip - its never going to work. Usually the mushroom spawn will be especially created by a mycologist, and will normally consist of some kind of grain that has been impregnated with mushroom mycelium (mycelium is what the mushrooms come from).
You can create your own mushroom spawn several ways, but what most people don't realise is that you can actually grow your own mushrooms from old stem butts, enabling you to re-use old mushrooms and start your own cycle of mushroom cultivation.
All that you need to do is to cut off a small section of the mushroom stem butt, no bigger then an inch long. It is important to try and use the bottom of the stem, with the bulbous part of the stem intact (this part is usually removed prior to preparing the mushroom for cooking and for packaging before being sold in stores). However if you have already grown some of your own mushrooms from some kind of spawn then you will have no problem getting hold of the healthiest variety of stem butts. You can still try using the stem from shop-brought mushrooms, but you may not have as much success.
It is important stating that not all mushrooms have this stem growth capability, and there are only a few varieties that are known to be able to re-spawn from their stems. These include Oyster mushrooms (Pleutrous Ostreatus), Parasol mushrooms, Morels, Prince, and many more.
All you need to do is remove a section of the stem butts, and get some corrugated cardboard. Soak the cardboard and then try to peel it in half, so that the paper is as thin as possible. Next, lay the carboard on a surface and place some of the stem butts on top. Try and leave around 6 inches of cardboard per stem butt. Cover the stems with the rest of the corrugated cardboard and then re-soak for a few minutes. Place the folded pieces of cardboard into an old box - cardboard, wood, or anything else that will keep the box moist, and then place it in a shady position in your garden before covering it with leaves.
What will happen is that the mycelium will start to grow through the pieces of cardboard, from the stem butts, using the materials in the cardboard as a food (mushrooms naturally grow on wood and so cardboard is ideal to use and is easier to break down). After a few months you will have your own cardboard spawn, and you can either use this to grow mushrooms on more cardboard, or you can mix this cardboard spawn with straw, creating an outdoor bed or mushroom patch, or you can try and transfer the spawn to other substrates.
Contrary to what you might think, prosecco experts don't recommend you use a regular champagne flute.Shutterstock/Maurese
It's summertime and the fizz should be well and truly flowing.
While crémant and English sparkling wine are steadily gaining popularity among those who don't have the spare cash to invest in champers, our old friend prosecco is still mighty popular.
Counterfeit fizz, however, is reportedly on the rise. So that you can rest assured that your bubbles are the real deal, it's worth knowing how to spot a fake.
And have you ever wondered what the terms "DOC" and "DOCG" refer to?
Advertisement
Business Insider spoke to Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, the fashion executive husband of Jessica Chastain, who also owns his own premium prosecco brand Fiol.
Prosecco is made in certain territories in north-east Italy, using mainly "glera" grapes, although other varieties such as chardonnay and pinot grigio can also be mixed in.
Passi de Preposulo told us that back in 2009, when the prosecco boom began following the financial crisis, around 20% of bottles were fake.
That year a consortium of producers made efforts to regulate the industry and created two classification labels, DOC and DOCG, that could confirm a bottle's status.
DOC means designation of controlled origin, while DOCG means designation of controlled origin and guaranteed.
Advertisement
The latter is more stringent. The production area of DOCG is limited to the Conegliano Valdobbiadene region, a hilly area in north-east Italy 50km from Venice, where the prosecco grapes that are grown are considered "superior." DOCG guidelines also stipulate that the government has to taste the prosecco before it is bottled.
The rolling lush hills of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene region are pictured below.
Shutterstock/FranciscoMarques
Meanwhile, production of prosecco DOC falls within four provinces of Friuli Venezia Giulia — Gorizia, Pordenone, Trieste, and Udine — and five in Veneto — Belluno, Padua, Treviso, Venice, and Vicenza.
You can see an illustration of the "quality pyramid" here.
According to the prosecco DOC's online guidelines, there are a few markers that will help you to detect whether you have a real bottle of prosecco on your hands.
Advertisement
Firstly, look out for a unique alphanumeric code and data matrix on the bottle collar.
Meanwhile, on the back of the bottle the label should read "Prosecco DOC" and "Product of Italy."
Shutterstock/Maurese
To make your experience even more authentic, it may come as a surprise that regular champagne flutes are not recommended by the prosecco experts in the know. Passi de Preposulo suggests that you enjoy prosecco in a tulip-shaped glass to make the most of the "mineralogy and bouquet."
People who earn more money may be less likely to share their wealth than those who earn less. That's according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London, published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.
Researchers conducted a social experiment where people were recruited to play games for real money. People were assigned as "lower status" or "higher status," which determined how much money they were given at the beginning — signifying wealth.
The games involved the participants deciding how much money they wanted to keep and how much they wanted to donate to a group kitty, which would be shared out between everyone.
Sometimes people's wealth was determined by chance, other times it was based on their effort.
Advertisement
Overall, lower status participants would contribute more to the group pot than higher status ones. And those who earned their "high status" labels would contribute even less than when they received the wealth through chance.
"For the high status individuals, the way in which wealth was achieved, whether through chance or effort, appeared to be the key factor determining the level of cooperation observed," said Ma gda Osman, a professor at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and lead author of the study.
"This wasn't the case for the low status individuals. How they got to their low status made no difference to their behaviour in the game."
If you gain a high status through effort rather than chance, she said, you are more likely to want to keep what you earned. When your wealth is limited, you have more of an incentive to cooperate.
"The point here being that even if one is acting cooperatively, there is no reason to think that this is purely for altruistic reasons," she said. Rather, you hope that by contributing more, others will do so too, and ultimately you will profit from it.
Advertisement
Even so, there is no guarantee everyone else in the game would do the same as you. In other words, you take a bigger risk in contributing more as a lower status person, because you have no idea if others will reciprocate.
"The other surprising finding is that empathy has next to no impact on promoting pro-social behaviour, in other words contributing money to the group pot," said Osman. "This matters because there are a lot of claims that empathy is the glue that binds people to act socially. What we show is that when money matters, empathy plays virtually no role in improving pro-social behaviours."
Ever since Steve Jobs announced the Apple iPad, there have been mixed emotions. Some people think it will revolutionize the personal computer, others believe it's an overhyped toy. Now that it's available to buy, the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. It may not be the future of computing but the Apple iPad definitely fills a need in the tech industry today. Being the first slate PC of its kind, Apple has set the bar very high once again. Here are a few reasons why you want the Apple iPad
• It's a complete multimedia device
o Is it an iPod? Is it a HD movie player? Is it an e-reader? How about all of the above. The iPad has all of these functions built into one device. The 9.7" HD screen is perfect for watching movies that you can download from iTunes directly on to the device. Why buy another e-reader that only function as an e-reader when you could buy the iPad and have many other functions at your fingertips.
• The App Store
o Just like the iPhone, the iPad can download loads of productivity software and games. From maps to language software, the app store is loaded with useful programs. There are also plenty of games to download that take advantage of the multi-touch screen and motion sensor built into the iPad. Like driving games? Let the iPad be your steering wheel.
• Web browsing with Safari
o Ever wanted to check the score of a game online but didn't want to fire up your PC and wait for it to load? That's where the iPad comes in. Pick it up and turn on the screen to start browsing with Safari. Watch YouTube videos, check your e-mail, and follow your stock picks, all with ease on the iPad.
There are absolute limit-less uses for the iPad. With the growing amount of apps being added daily to the app store, new features are popping up daily. Don't wait and be the last person to jump on the iPad bandwagon, you'll be missing the out on one of the best gadgets ever.
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder, CEO, and chairman of the board at Facebook. He also controls a majority of the company's voting stock. His power at the company is complete. He cannot be fired or disciplined. If the directors on his board attempted to remove him, he could simply vote with his stock to replace them with friendlier ones. It is unlikely the current directors would do that because they are each paid at least $350,000 a year, except for the ones who are also Zuckerberg's company employees — they are paid many millions more.
Zuckerberg has much more power than ordinary CEOs at publicly traded companies, many of whom are held accountable by independent board chairmen and directors appointed at the behest of investors. On paper, everything ought to be going his way.
And yet Zuckerberg is at war with his own shareholders. As Business Insider's Jake Kanter reported last week, 83% of independent investors — those stockholders who are not Zuckerberg himself or his managing executives — believe he should be fired as chairman of the board.
That's an astonishing majority against him, given the stock's performance. By any measure, Zuckerberg has delivered as CEO. His product is used by 2 billion people. The stock has risen from an IPO price of $38 in 2012 to $195 today — a staggering return.
Advertisement
Yet his own investors think he needs to be reined in.
Zuck's critics should be taken seriously
It is extremely rare for a majority of common stockholders to vote against their own CEO with such a massive majority. Even in the fiercest of proxy fights, activist investors find it difficult to muster more than 20% or 30% of a company's stock. (Shareholders suffer from extreme inertia — it's easier to sell the stock than it is to wage war against a board.) If, at an annual general meeting, the company wins a vote by a margin of less than 90%, it is generally regarded as a sign of significant unrest.
So Zuck's critics should be taken seriously.
The shareholders' problem is that Zuckerberg has a history of making mistakes, which he himself admits.
He initially did not think that Russian interference in Western elections via Facebook was a big deal. He also took responsibility for not following up quickly enough on the Cambridge Analytica crisis. "We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake," he said.
Advertisement
Way back in the beginning, Zuckerberg made the mistake of being cavalier about his users' privacy. As a 19-year-old Harvard freshman who founded Facebook in his dorm room — an origin story Zuckerberg still references when he speaks in public today — he sent a string of texts to a friend describing how much data he had access to. "People just submitted it," Zuckerberg told his friend. "I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
Facebook, with Google, has a duopoly over the internet
Who among us has not said something stupid as a teenage student? We can forgive him for that.
Zuckerberg is a different person today. He is a corporate titan whose firm vacuums up half of all new advertising dollars being spent on the web. Facebook, with Google, is a de facto duopoly over the internet. The pair capture 71% of all digital ad spending in Europe, according to analyst Brian Weiser at Pivotal Research.
And that is precisely why Zuckerberg's unchecked power is so dangerous. In March, Facebook stock slipped 6%, wiping $30 billion off the value of the company, on the Cambridge Analytica news. That was just one morning's trading.
The cost of Zuckerberg's errors in judgment thus run into the billions.
Advertisement
Yet Facebook, which is systemically important to the internet, remains tightly attached to a single point of failure: Mark Zuckerberg.
At other companies, the founder, ceo and chairman are three different people. If one gets something wrong, there are two others to act as backup.
Leaked texts from the board say: "He's worried that it's the straw that breaks the camel's back on the optics of good governance"
Even Zuckerberg's own board members are aware that this is a problem. In December 2016, some texts between Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen, the Netscape cofounder turned Silicon Valley investor who runs the venture-capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, surfaced in a shareholder lawsuit.
The suit alleged that Erskine Bowles, one of Facebook's board members, was "worried that one of the concessions Zuckerberg wanted — to allow the billionaire to serve two years in government without losing control of Facebook — would look particularly irresponsible." (Zuckerberg wanted the option to leave the company and go into politics without giving up control.) Andreessen texted Zuckerberg that the "biggest issue" was "how to define the gov't service thing without freaking out shareholders that you are losing commitment."
"Erskine is just massively uncomfortable with you getting to low economic ownership and then going off on leave with no involvement by the board and retaining control,'' Andreessen, who is also a board member, said.
Advertisement
"We rediscuss it on every call ... I'm going to try to drag it over the line one more time. ☺ ... He's worried that it's the straw that breaks the camel's back on the optics of good governance."
Facebook's independent investors — a majority of all investors — believe the company's corporate governance is wrong. And at least one of Zuckerberg's own board members thinks Zuckerberg has gone too far, in the past, in his desire for control.
It is not clear what the independent shareholders can do to force more accountability inside Facebook's corporate governance structure.
Mobile phone insurance is the most important thing in today's world. Since 2006 according to the police and insurance companies, crime related to thefts and loss of mobile phones are increasing latest figures show that almost 3,500 mobiles phones are lost on buses, trains, and cafes while some 1,200 of the mobiles are damages by water per month. Another 400,000 were dropped in the toilets and two thirds of the victims are between the age of 13 and 16. It is in our best interest if we protect ourself by a mobile insurance.
The most common excuse people give that they never thought that they would lose their mobiles like that and they do not insure their mobiles well over 3 million people were proved wrong for not insuring their mobiles. Many people were unaware that mobile phones could be insured at all. And that losing the mobile phone would cost him.
Mobile insurance are to buy insurance from your airtime supplier or to go to an outside insurance source. The obvious advantage of using your airtime provider is that all your mobile phone costs are with one company. This means you can call to cancel your phone if it is lost or stolen and get a new phone sent straight away. Of course, the disadvantage is that the cost and level of cover you get may be different to what you need or are willing to pay. Your best bet is to shop around before you buy any mobile phone insurance.
But you should be aware of the new fake insurance companies calling trying to sell mobile insurance. Avoid them. It is always recommended that you go to a renowned insurance company known to every one or buy mobile insurance online from the various authentic insurance companies like Sony insurance, Nokia insurance, Alcatel Insurance, Blackberry Insurance, Siemens insurance, Motorola Insurance and others. Almost all the major mobile manufacturing companies provide online mobile insurance. The best part is they can be contacted in the event of a problem anytime and every time and from any corner of the world.
If you own a very expensive mobile or a latest set, you could even jumble up your mobile insurance into your home contents insurance. Insurance in general and mobile insurance in particular is very important. It safeguards us and enables us to live a tension free life.
When looking for phone insurance there are a number of features you should look for. The main feature of the insurance should be the replacement of your phone should anything happen to it. Most insurance policies offer this, although you have to pay an excess payment on some whilst others will only send you a second hand phone of a similar specification. Another feature you should look for is cover for unauthorized phone calls should your phone be stolen. The advantages of mobile insurance are that you are covered should your phone be stolen, which is becoming an increasingly common occurrence. Losing or having your phone stolen can cost hundreds of pounds, because replacing the actual phone costs a lot more than getting a contract.
Although mobile phone insurance is a good idea, if you are someone who has never lost his or her phone or simply doesn't take it out very much then you might not need insurance. If you keep a security lock on your phone then no one else can access it should it be stolen. It is also advised that everyone should keep a record of the imei number of the mobile phone. Many people do not insure their mobiles and later regret. It is advisable that you insure your mobile phones like your home and jewelry.
The pharmaceutical industry is looking to bring more non-opioid pain medications into market. Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Debbie Page, 66, has suffered from chronic pain for half of her life after a back injury left her with the inability to stand for more than a few minutes at a time.
"After an hour I can't think or see," she said. "The pain takes over and it's torture."
Page, a part-time occupational therapist in Boston, said oxycodone saved her life.
"I was at a point where I was seriously considering suicide or moving to Mexico. In trying everything, the only thing that ever has worked is opioids — ever," she said. "They're just magic."
Advertisement
For many patients like Page, opioids are the only way they're able to manage chronic pain and lead full lives. Traditional nonaddictive medicine such as a class of drugs known as nonaspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, does not work for everyone.
But with the opioid crisis in full force, doctors are feeling pressure to cut back on the number of opioid painkillers they prescribe, even among patients using them responsibly. This means the more than 100 million Americans suffering from chronic pain aren't left with many options that are as effective or accessible.
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
For patients looking for alternatives to opioids, it can be hard to get them paid for by insurance companies. Treatments such as radio-frequency ablation, which uses radio-frequency waves to disrupts the ability of nerves to send pain, steroid injections and nerve-blockers, which are locally injected temporary anesthetics, are often labeled as "experimental" and "investigational" by insurance companies, effectively making them ineligible for reimbursement, despite being heavily recommended by many pain specialists.
So even when new technology, such as neuromodulation shows effectiveness, it can still be difficult for patients to get access to it. An increasing number of lawmakers are opening up to the concept of using marijuana as an opioid alternative, especially as a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that states with medical marijuana laws had lower opioid-associated deaths.
At the same time, drug companies and doctors alike are on the hunt for new ways to tackle the complexities of managing chronic pain. Some of the new approaches look to lifestyle fixes and cognitive therapies, while others look toward more medical-related interventions such as surgery and alternative medications.
'No doctor will take me'
There were more than 42,000 deaths in the US attributed to opioids in 2016, and 40% of all opioid-overdose deaths involved prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Advertisement
State lawmakers and some health systems, in turn, are putting measures in place to cap the number of opioid prescriptions that doctors dole out.
As a result, the number of opioid prescriptions nationally fell 22% between 2013 and 2017, according to a recent study from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science.
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Page said she was already feeling the effects.
"I'm concerned every month ... no doctor will take me," she said. "I've had to travel three hours one day to fill my prescription. Everyone's out."
Advertisement
The problem is opioids are hard to beat when it comes to initial pricing, convenience, and immediate effectiveness.
Margaret Fitzpatrick, 52, was doing acupuncture daily to manage her chronic pain but had to cut back because the treatment wasn't covered by her insurance company after she exceeded 13 visits a year.
"Not having access to good therapists or acupuncture or massage is really frustrating especially with the opioid crisis and doctors not prescribing them when alternatives aren't covered by insurance," she said. Fitzpatrick was a teacher for many years, but had to stop working two years ago because of her pain.
"For those of us who are disabled, we don't have a lot of income, and you're taking away the alternatives that would work," she said.
For the most part, opioids work to reduce pain for a large number of people with different types of pain conditions, and there are usually minimal side effects if the patient has no history of substance-use disorder, said Cindy Steinberg, national director of policy and advocacy at the US Pain Foundation.
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Opioids work by impersonating chemicals in the brain called endorphins, which act like messengers between nerve cells. The endorphin molecules bind to corresponding receptors on cells that exist in both the brain's pleasure center, and also on nerve cells that reside within the body's pain network.
Advertisement
These mock endorphins are far more potent than the natural ones produced by the body, so as they do their magic, they can elicit a wash of intense euphoria along with pain relief. But the body does become tolerant to this, and with every hit it needs more the next time to achieve the same response. Stopping entirely makes the body sick from withdrawal.
Samantha Lee/Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
"Withdrawal is extremely painful," Page said. "I have to take the pill. The torture that people have to go through when they're suddenly reduced or kicked off is inhumane."
Finding alternatives
Dr. Janet Pearl, who runs a pain center outside Boston, described the pain she treats as a spectrum. Some types of anti-seizure medications and a class of antidepressants are effective at managing pain, while regenerative medicine is also an exciting area to tap into. For some patients, the body's wear and tear and genetics can make pain worse. For others, cognitive behavioral therapy works wonders. Patients need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, Pearl said.
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Julie Morgenlender, a 39-year-old personal-finance consultant who's struggled with chronic pain for 20 years, has tried myriad treatments, including acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, and disease-modifying drugs like Plaquenil. She also suffers from autoimmune thyroid disease, for which she takes a drug called Nature-Throid.
"I have pain from each of these different things, and each one is just one piece of the puzzle," she said.
According to a Bio Industry Analysis published in February, pain accounts for a greater amount of direct US healthcare costs compared to diseases like cancer, diabetes, or cardiovascular dysfunction. Four times as many Americans suffer from chronic pain than diabetes.
Yet pain conditions are on the tail end of receiving venture funding. There are 11 unique types of drugs in the US approved for pain outside of opioids, easily eclipsed when compared to the 93 unique types of cancer drugs in 2017.
Pharma companies are just starting to invest more in drugs targeting chronic pain. There are 17 pain drugs in late-stage development to treat forms of chronic pain, as well as about 40 drugs in earlier human clinical trials.
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
The types of formulas used to create pain medications needs to be expanded, and there needs to be wider discussion and increased legislation to provide access to these medications, said Neel Mehta, medical director of pain medicine at Weill Cornell.
Advertisement
"This is changing, but there was a time where if you wanted to use an alternative treatment, you had to establish failure of an opioids, purely because of cost," Mehta said.
One of the main approaches researchers are looking into is a class of drugs that work with nerve growth factor. NGF is important in developing babies' nervous systems, and they evolve to play a huge part in how adults feel pain.
"It stimulates peripheral nerves, and thereby you end up with a barrage of pain signals from the skin or muscles up through the body up through spinal cord into the brain where it's interpreted as pain," Ken Verburg, a senior vice president for development at Pfizer, told Business Insider. He's leading the development of tanezumab, one of the NGF inhibitors. Tanezumab blocks the effect of nerve-growth factor and lessens the sensation of pain.
The Canadian Agency for Drug and Technology in Health in February listed the approach as one of the emerging non-opioid drugs for management of chronic noncancer pain. It's one of the two major NGF-binding drugs that have surfaced in the pharmaceutical world.
Pfizer and Lilly, tanezumab: In 2017, the FDA fast-tracked the drug, which was altered to a lowered dosage during its late-stage studies and was used to treat osteoarthritis, chronic low-back pain, and cancer pain.
Regeneron and Teva, fasinumab: A rival drug to tanezumab, it was halted during its phase 2b trial in 2016. In May, the company ditched the higher dosage of the drug. It also targets low-back pain and osteoarthritis.
NGF blockers haven't always had a storied past. Fulranumab, an anti-NGF pain drug, was returned by Johnson & Johnson to Amgen in 2016 after a late-stage clinical trial because of safety concerns and has since been discontinued.
Advertisement
There's also a group of capsaicin-derived drugs that target the caspacin receptor (TRPV1) in the body to inactivate local pain fibers that transmit signals to other neurons. Capsaicin is a chemical extract from peppers. Repeated exposure to it cause substance P, a protein that transmits pain signals, to be used up, which reduces pain.
Centrexion, CNTX-4975: In a phase 2 study, the drug kicked in within a few days and lasted about six months. "What our product does is it quiets down just the ends of pain fibers like giving a haircut," Kerrie Brady, chief business officer of Centrexion, told Business Insider in January. "And that stops the connection and stops the pain signaling going forward."
Acorda Therapeutics, capsaicin 8% patch: It was approved by the FDA in 2009 to manage neuropathic pain. The patch is undergoing a late-stage trial with osteoarthritis patients.
Of the drugs in development, there are a couple of promising new candidates like Angiotensin II signaling that has a role in pathways of peripheral neuropathic pain, and EMA401, an old antagonist being repurposed by Novartis to treat neuropathic pain from diabetes.
Cornell's Mehta says that while these new drugs are promising, more needs to be more done about educating pain patients.
"Patients are open to it, but there are patients out there who are more apprehensive about it. We need to be cognizant of that. We need to do a good job of counseling, to be understanding of patient concerns, and encourage trials of other medications," he said. "We also need to understand with the new therapies coming in who is best suited for that."
Although Steinberg is waiting until all the clinical trials are done and the drugs formally enter the market, she holds out hope for the future of drug innovation in treating pain.
Advertisement
"If a drug can be as effective as opioids without the risk of addiction for those with substance-use disorder," she said, "it is worth the investment."
