Everyone likes a good mystery story. Particularly when it involves some unknown kind of bacteria growing underwater on spent nuclear fuel rods with no obvious carbon source for growth. Stay tuned.
I’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the potential for using copper in the built environment to limit bacterial growth and/or pathogenicity (e.g. here and here). I’ve heard and read things about copper which cover the whole spectrum from “it’s a magic bullet” to “snake oil”. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in …
Yet another Legionella outbreak, this time in a retirement home in Ohio that has killed 6 people and sickened a couple dozen others. I feel like the rate of new stories about Legionella outbreaks (at least in the US) has been rising a lot the last couple of years. I found some data from the …
Here’s a story that combines two of my favorite topics these days, microbes and space. In this case students from Japan are building a special satellite to house and photograph slime mold growth (Dictyostelium discoideum). I’m not sure exactly what they’ll learn from this, but it sounds cool! Pictures and data will be publicly available …
Interesting article from a couple days ago talking about the procedures used to assess salmonella contamination in poultry processing plants and some of the issues therein. Not recommended reading if you’re having chicken for dinner anytime soon. h/t to Paula for sending us the link to this article.
This weekend, National Public Radio (NPR) has been heavily promoting a feature on microbiomes scheduled for Monday, July 22nd. If you are a regular listener, you will catch it. If not, you can go to http://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/ on Monday or after and look at the lineup for Monday morning’s show.
Had to post about this recent paper that came out in PLOS ONE, “Spaceflight Promotes Biofilm Formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa“. Obviously we’re thinking a lot about bacterial activity in space, apropos of our Project MERCCURI work. Really the title says it all here. Biofilms are awesome. Space is awesome. Turns out that biofilms in space …
Giant piles of plastic floating in the ocean might not be what most people think of when they hear the phrase “built environment”… but hey, we built it! Turns out that this “plastisphere” has it’s own microbiome, distinct from the seawater around it. Not surprisingly of course, but cool that someone is looking. Abstract below, …
As we have ben writing about here, we are planning to do some microbial sampling of the International Space Station as part of our Project MERCURRI. Thus I read with great interest the following headline this morning: ISS Supply Ship Opens Hatch After ‘Bacteria’ Delay | World | RIA Novosti. Uh oh. Seems that some mold …
On Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross yesterday there was a discussion of a book about air travel: Flying High And Low In ‘Full Upright And Locked Position’ | KQED Public Media for Northern CA. And one of the topics that came up was the germ / microbe content of different parts of a plane. Not sure …