Another short post here, this time on modeling the spread of hospital-acquired bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria is a huge problem in hospitals and these researchers have developed some models for how this process actually occurs in hospitals. They’ve applied their techniques in a couple of real-life situations with interesting results. They found for …
Going through the list of Microbiology Blogs we have curated at microBEnet and going to try to feature one of them every day or so. And just going to do this in semi-alphabetic order. Today’s blog: Catch the Microbes Authors: unclear Tagline/Summary: See the invisible … We dedicate ourselves to hunt microbes! Recent Posts: Glowing Christmastree Bacteria Interesting websites …
Going through the list of Microbiology Blogs we have curated at microBEnet and going to try to feature one of them every day or so. And just going to do this in semi-alphabetic order. Today’s blog: BacterioFiles (which is a podcast series with a blog with details about each post, but I view podcasts as simply audio-enhanced blogs). Author: …
We recently wrote about moldy documents in French archives and a higher incidence of asthma among workers who handled documents than others working in the same spaces but not handling them. See our previous post: “Hands off the moldy docs (for your own good?)” Now we find researchers reported that bacteria can also be transferred …
Quick post here. For those of you who eat or cook poultry this may interest you: Why you shouldn’t wash chicken before cooking – The Times of India. The article discusses the results of a survey done by News.com.au on whether people wash their poultry before cooking it. Seems that this is quite common in some places. …
Rob Dunn of North Carolina State University has written a charming and fascinating piece on the microbes that inhabit our belly buttons. You can find it here on the Scientific American blog site (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/11/07/after-two-years-scientists-still-cant-solve-belly-button-mystery-continue-navel-gazing/). I strongly recommend it for the skill of his writing as well as the extremely interesting insights into the microbes in …
Not sure what to make of this still but it certainly is a case of microbes in the built environment: Living Concrete Fixes Its Own Cracks With Built-in Bacteria. Not sure why the Malaysian Digest is covering this but it still intrigues me and thought it might be of interest.
Heard about an interesting paper today (sadly not open access) describing airflow simulations in an aerosol chamber. Basically they showed that if you release bugs from a mannequin, they spread all over the room… up to 3.5 meters away. A worthwhile study, but not something that wasn’t known already. What made this get so much …
A paper has been uploaded to the Mendeley group associated with microbe.net, Microbiology of the Built Environment (http://www.mendeley.com/groups/844031/microbiology-of-the-built-environment/). Appropriately, the title of the paper is as accurate as it is concise: “Indoor air purification and decontamination by a new highly-efficient air purification technology with filter sterilization and impact of air exchange rate on bacteria and …
Quick post here about a study that came out last month “Exploring Bacterial Diversity in Hospital Environments by GS-FLX Titanium Pyrosequencing” by Poza et al in Madrid. These authors used 454 sequencing of 16S to survey bacterial populations in the entrance hall and the ICU of a hospital in Madrid. Not surprisingly, they found lower …