So yesterday morning, Jonathan Eisen and myself headed down to Antioch, CA to sample a pilot wastewater treatment facility. In a couple of hours I went from knowing literally nothing about the process to having some handle on at least the latter stages. Pretty cool microbiology. As I understand the problem at hand, conventional wastewater …
A selection of new papers of interest for this readership, collected from my blog MicrobiomeDigest: Microbes in the air Evaluation of the potential for virus dispersal during hand drying: a comparison of three methods – Patrick T. Kimmitt, Keith F. Redway – Journal of Applied Microbiology ($$) Aims: To use a MS2 bacteriophage model to compare three …
This week’s papers are about microbes found on hospital doorknobs, spacecraft assembly cleanrooms, a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, in waste water, and in creosote-treated wood composting. I could not find a song about the specific painting featured here, but Panic at the Disco had a song about another famous painting by LdV: The Ballad of Mona …
Though our water undergoes many steps to become drinkable, there are many microbes that remain and have the potential to cause disease. A December study conducted in China aimed to determine the microbial compositions of water before and after treatment. This study was unique because it also sought to find the difference in microbial functions …
Researchers in Italy have found abnormally high levels of infectious microbes in the water from faucets at two hospitals compared to water coming in from the deeper areas of the pipes. One of the reasons is that the water is not meeting the chlorine or temperature requirement needed to eliminate harmful pathogens, such as Acinetobacter …