After eight years, California’s Proposition 2 goes into effect in 2015. NPR’s Forum did a program on this today. Prop. 2 is the California law to allow egg-laying chickens enough space to stand up, turn around and stretch their legs. Opponents of the law claim that the eggs will get pooped on with the new space guidelines. On the other …
Let’s begin with a little detail on a current viral outbreak and finish with the indoor environment: Since October 17th, 16 NHL players and 2 referees have had confirmed mumps cases. The first diagnosed case was from a Minnesota Wild player, and then 4 other Wild players were subsequently diagnosed as well. Since then, players …
Just a quick post here pointing people to an article of possible interest: Healthcare-associated Infections Keep Industry On High Alert. In the article Sara Marberry discusses some issues relating to microbes and the built environment in hospital design. Among the topics covered are hydrogen peroxide vapor systems, UV irradiation devices, and copper as possible antimicrobials. Also …
Just a quick post here about the spreading of C. difficile among patients who visited healthcare settings but didn’t take antiobiotics. Traditionally C. difficile is thought to infect people whose normal microbiota was disturbed by antibiotics. It’s also the target of most experiments on fecal transplants since those have been shown to be very effective …
I generally try to avoid any type of discussion of the age of researchers and I also generally never ask people about their age. But this time it is in a story so I think it is OK to mention: Jack Gilbert of Argonne National Laboratory is on Crain’s Chicago 40 Under 40 2014 list. This …
Just a quick post here on an NPR story that caught my attention “Giving Chickens Bacteria … To Keep Them Antibiotic-Free”. Unlike with humans where determining the effect of probiotics is complicated by a lot of variation in the population (genetic, cultural, diet, etc.), with a whole bunch of chickens it’s easier to measure the …
Heard this story on NPR yesterday: ‘A Universe Beneath Our Feet’: Life In Beijing’s Underground : NPR. It discusses the growing trend in Beijing for people to be living in apartments / basements comlpetely underground. This is happening for multiple reasons and it clearly has some potential big consequences. It does seem like a possible …
Just a quick post here. Found this news story (from Nov 18) doing some Google Searchers: UO student gets EPA grant to study health link between plants, people – Portland Business Journal. It discusses a new grant on “Relationships Among Airborne Microbial Communities, Urban Land Uses and Vegetation Cover: Implications for Urban Planning and Human Health.” …
Well, I am no lawyer but this certainly seems interesting from a microbial point of view: Court’s Reasoning That “Bacteria” Is Not A “Pollutant” Favorable For Policyholders In Other Cases – Insurance – United States. From the article: That court found that “under Louisiana law, Legionella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria” — the bacteria which cause Legionnaire’s …
When I first saw this headline: Fox 25 Investigates: Hidden hospital germs I geared up for YASS – yet another swab story (this is a bit of a play on the “swab story” complaint Mark Martin uses for stories that report on microbes found by swabbing. Nooooooooooo- there are bacteria in our homes —- run run run — aaarrgg …