Cutting Board Companions

The authors of this new paper have really cooked up something interesting!  “Microbial Safety of Wood in Contact with Food: A Review” by Florence Aviat, et al and published in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety is an 86-reference review on materials found in kitchens. Elisabeth Bik did list this in her March 7 blog of new papers, but this one …

A New Way to Fight Superbugs?

There are a few news articles that have been coming out (like this one) that draw attention to this recently published paper in ISME Journal, entitled “Iron availability shapes the evolution of bacteriocin resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.” The big picture of the paper was to study how resistance evolves and to explore the effectiveness of …

Antibiotics Susceptibility Pattern of Hospital Indoor Airborne Bacteria

Jonathan drew my attention to this paper on antibiotic susceptibility of 153 bacterial isolates collected from a hospital in Ethiopia. I thought the numerous grammatical errors in the paper would parallel with the quality of the study, but I was pleasantly disproved. In the abstract they state, “86.9% [of the 153 isolates] were resistant to …

Electron Microscopy and Fighting Superbugs

Last week, a bunch of news articles came out (like this one) that talk about how we are on track to figuring out new ways to tackle antibiotic resistant superbugs. The research they are referring to highlights a paper recently published in Nature (a closed access journal) by Changjiang Dong’s group at the University of East …

A Rant About Inadequate Identification and Treatment of Bacterial Infections

For those of you who have an ear tuned to the media’s noise about germ this, bacteria that, this blog post may resonate with you. I was just reading this article recently published in Nature about B. pseudomallei, a bacteria that causes meliodosis. The authors found that the bacteria is more globally distributed than previously …

Success in the Form of Failure

In this recent segment on Science Friday, Ira Glass interviews Stuart Firestein about how failure in science is not just inevitable, but is just as important to the advancement of knowledge as the success is. I know that every single person can relate to this idea, which actually applies to far beyond the sciences. I …

The Building Science and Microbiology Disconnect

Did you know that NASA took on the project of creating the world’s greenest building? It’s called Sustainability Base and it’s located right in the heart of Silicon Valley. It boasts incredible energy efficiency and often puts energy back into the grid. And as it’s website says, it’s claimed to have been built to be “furnished …

Changing How We Talk About Antibiotic Resistance

I was catching up on my NPR shows this evening and this one is definitely worth a listen. Here are the slides that they talk about in the podcast that summarize conversations with a focus group in England about antimicrobial resistance. Science Friday interviews Ed Young (who I highly recommend you follow on Twitter if you don’t already) …