Fancy fungus: The lucrative business of harvesting infected moth larvae is at risk, theJSTOR Dailyreported earlier this month. Much like in the video-game-turned-TV-hit The Last of Us — where the fungus known as Cordyceps takes over the body of its host — a species of the fungus infects moth larvae when they are buried underground before the arrival of winter in countries like China, India, and Nepal. But the infection is halted when harvesters dig out the would-be ghost moths to reap their hefty price as they are sold for a number of medicinal purposes for up to USD 140k per kilogram.

Climate change and over-harvesting are to blame: The age-old remedy, being more expensive than gold, is an attractive product, which has been prompting aggressive collection. This is particularly problematic when coupled with the fact that conditions for its survival are quite elaborate, from specific temperatures and humidity levels, to soil quality. Rising temperatures have caused some of the surveyed populations to vanish, while others have relocated to higher ground to colder weather, the article reports.

Which has a significant economic impact. Researchers behind a 2018 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) examining “[t]he demise of caterpillar harvesting” suggested that those whose livelihoods depend on fungi-larvae harvesting ought to find alternatives, in the absence of other viable solutions at the moment.

There’s a massive gap in data on women’s health, which “ultimately influence[s] health outcomes for women globally by creating blind spots in the insights that drive research design, investment decisions, and pipeline priorities,” according to McKinsey. This lack of women-specific health data leads to a shortage in diagnoses and innovation to address health issues women face, McKinsey notes.

Women’s health could fare better with more awareness and equity, Wired said. Despite advances in science and medicine, healthcare is nowhere near where it should be as far as women are concerned. Taboos still exist around menopause and menstruation — but that is slowly changing. One area that could use improvement is the tendency to treat women “one organ system at a time,” rather than as a complete body, Buck Institute’s Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality cofounder and director Jennifer Garrison was quoted as saying.

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