For anyone looking for another reason to fear hospitals, nosocomial infections (hospital acquired infections), or spinal injections, here is a story for you. Contaminated spinal injections were given to patients in 20 states and led to 751 individuals developing fungal meningitis and 64 deaths. FDA and CDC officials conducted a preliminary investigation and discovered a …
You can check out David Coil’s introduction to the project here. The workflow pre-print is hosted by Peer J here. Feel free to check it out! We would love any comments or suggestions. I was first introduced to the swabs to genome workflow project a little over a year ago. I had just started in the …
While searching for news about microbes in the built environment I stumbled across these fascinating photographs (electron micrographs) of symbiotic termite gut microbes. Taken with a scanning electron microscope by Kevin J. Carpenter a biologist/microscopist/photographer (and fellow Davis alum!), they just finished an exhibit at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in January, after being displayed in …
According to a 2012 Environment Canada report, electricity and buildings were responsible for 25% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Designing energy efficient buildings and retrofitting existing buildings to increase their energy efficiency is a growing concern for architects. However a recent article in Environment and Energy Publishing reiterates the need to consider the microbial environment in …
Health care associated infections (HAIs) also known as nosocomial infections occurred in 4.5 out of every 100 hospital admissions in 2002 and contributed to 99,000 deaths (Klevens 2002). In the past many prevention strategies have focused on human based transmission (such as consistent hand washing) ignoring less obvious preventative measures such as those involving a …
A recent investigation by the New York Times detailed here looked into water contamination levels of the rooftop water towers installed throughout New York City. The towers became common in the 1800s as buildings became to tall to allow for adequate water pressure. Even today the city’s water mains only provide enough pressure to reach the …
Professor Jane Carlton, the director of the NYU Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, is leading a team of scientists to study the metagenome of New York City. They have begun a pilot study of the microbial populations on one dollar bills, and they have begun to sample different sewage lines in all five boroughs. In …
The human microbiome and microbes in space are two of the sexiest topics in microbiology today. Together they have attracted the attention of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Hernan Lorenzi is leading a team to study how the composition of the human microbiome changes during long term space exploration. They will be analyzing the microbiome of …
US news just published an article, Disinfectants Can’t Defeat Salmonella in Food-Processing Plants: Study, discussing the inability of currently used disinfectants to eradicate or even reduce viable counts of Salmonella. The full article, Commonly used disinfectants fail to eradicate Salmonella enterica biofilm from food contact surface materials, is located behind a paywall in the Journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology …