A big question many scientists have been seeking to answer is if norovirus, a common cause of gastroenteritis, is aerosolized. This could possibly occur when an infected host vomits. A new paper in PLoS one tests just that, using a vomiting machine with a clay face on it and a bacteriophage surrogate for norovirus to simulate the …
As many of you know, parts of Yosemite national Park closed this passed week because of several cases of the plague. For most, the plague comes with the stigma of being an extremely deadly disease. But for others, the plague spells out a quite fascinating story of infectious disease. Secretions by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis …
A number of cooling towers around the Bronx have been found to be the source of a Legionella outbreak. A number of buildings in the area tested positive for contamination, including a drug manufacturer (thankfully the medicine was not contaminated, at least according to the company representatives). Legionella is a waterborne pathogen that can grow in …
There is an interesting paper from Julius LukeÅ¡ et al. in PLOS Pathogens that is worth looking at for anyone who works on microbial diversity: PLOS Pathogens: Are Human Intestinal Eukaryotes Beneficial or Commensals? They basically argue (reasonably I think) that the roles of microbial eukaryotes in the human gut have been excessively interpreted as parasitic and that …
Science papers about mosquitoes in urban parks and purses as fomites, and popular press articles about dirty menus in restaurants and filtering bacteria with book pages. Here is a good song to match the latter two: Turn the Page by Metallica. Diversity and abundance of mosquitoes (Diptera:Culicidae) in an urban park: Larval habitats and temporal variation – Antônio …
Source: Indoor air 2016 Indoor Air: The flagship meeting of ISIAQ (the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate) will be held in Ghent, Belgium July 3-8 in 2016. The meeting has a Call for Abstracts in the broad area of Indoor Air sciences that is now open. The meeting series is great and I encourage …
Social media has a lot of utilities, but who would have thought it could be useful in tracking down food illness sources? This article from The Washington Post discusses how Twitter and Yelp have been successfully used by health agencies in New York and Chicago to preempt restaurant inspections. Although this is by no means a miracle …
A recent New York Times article by Katie Rogers talks about an odd solution to California’s dwindling water supply. LA county is using small black balls that float on the surface of reservoir water to block UV and heat. This prevents both evaporation and algae growth from occurring. With California’s drought persistently eating away at our …
Here is your song to go with this post: Something in the water by Carrie Underwood. When we drink tap water, we usually don’t really think about the bacteria that might be in there. The quality of drinking water in the US is regulated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and monitored by regularly testing the water …
Perhaps you’ve heard about Dr. Premsyl Bercik’s recent publication in Nature Communications about the link between the gut microbiome and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety disorder. In his study, he induced early life stress in conventional mice and in germ-free mice by separating new born pups from their mother for several hours a …