Burger Bugs

I was clicking around news stories and found this Huffington Post article called “How Much Bacteria is In Your Burger?” Here’s what they report: “…every sample of ground beef collected by researchers from supermarkets around the country contained enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli, which indicate fecal contamination. In other words, all the beef had poop …

@ASM Conference on The Individual Microbe

Just announced: @ASM Conference on The Individual Microbe: Single-cell Analysis and Agent-based Modeling March 18—20, 2016 ASM Headquarters Washington, DC. @ASM Conferences are designed to foster interaction and facilitate collaboration between 50 invited participants by having in-depth discussions on a single topic and serving as an incubator for bringing new scientific specialty meetings to the …

Empiricist League #16 meeting at Union Hall on The Hidden DNA of NYC

OK this looks like it will be really really interesting.  Laurie Garrett sent me a link to this announcment about a meeting of the Empiricist League in New York: What are the 15,000 microscopic lifeforms that live on the subway? How disgusting are the contaminants in the Gowanus Canal? Can we use technology to stop …

Microbiome informed design – air quality, avoiding filtering, and lichens

This is one of those stories / articles / posts that simultaneously fascinates me and freaks me out a bit and for which I fluctuate wildly between those two points of view: bioME – RSA Human By Nature Entry on Behance By Candice de Aguiar Her basic design idea here is to allow for more microbial diversity …

Interesting and important new paper: Microbial composition of purified waters 

There is an interesting and potentially important new paper out from Caitlin Proctor, Marc Edwards and Amy Pruden: Microbial composition of purified waters and implications for regrowth control in municipal water systems in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.  The abstract is below:

Is your spacecraft contaminating the universe?

An article at Space.Com discusses a new push to make sure that spacecraft do not inadvertently contaminate the places they are visiting (e.g., Mars).  What microbes are on space vehicles and how to make sure the parts that are sent to other planets are “clean” or “sterile” is an interesting and active area of research. …

Animal antibiotic stewardship workshop

In response to studies showing that antibiotic resistance can spread through the food supply, the FDA has made some recent policy decisions about the use of antibiotics in livestock rearing. A public meeting will be held by the FDA on September 30, 2015, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Jefferson Auditorium, 14th and Independence …