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BEIJING DAILY

Shot Of Trouble: Fake Botox In China

Real thing in China?
Real thing in China?
Lisa Lane

BEIJING — Authorities have carried out a series of raids on beauty salons in the Chinese capital in an effort to crack down on counterfeit Botox, The Beijing News reports.

Botox is popular in China, where many young women aspire to have a thin V-shape face. But the high price of injections, which require regular follow-up sessions at clinics, has resulted in many women seeking black-market options that involve fake products, the article claims.

Counterfeit Botox is bought for up to 300 RMB ($45) and sold for many times that amount through aggressive social media promotion, online chat platforms and word-of-mouth. The injections are done in beauty parlors, rented apartments or hotel rooms. A Botox session takes only a few minutes, and is often referred to as the "lunch break cosmetic" in China,

"The black market is almost out of control," Dr. Wang Zhongjie, a member of Chinese Medical Association, told the news outlet.

Unqualified beauticians carry out the injections. "It may be injected into a blood vessel by these people without professional medical training," said Xiu Zhifu, a plastic surgeon.

Vanity, it would seem, has no limits.

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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