The Playboy Mansion Legionella outbreak story continues: becoming a social media epidemiological case study

Well, normally I would not want to write about things going on at the Playboy Mansion here, or really anywhere.  But this story about a Legionella outbreak seems to have legs (or maybe, flagella).  The LA Times has another article about this outbreak discussing in more detail how social media was used to help track …

Interesting news story by @MatthewHerper in @Forbes on the @IonTorrent DNA sequencing system #microBEnet

DNA sequencing technology, a key tool in characterizing microbes in the environment, just keeps getting cheaper and easier.  Right now there are some really nice technologies out there in machines from Illumina/Solexa, Roche/454 and ABI.  And coming on the horizon are some new systems that possibly will be either “better” in some way or allow …

High levels of Staphylococcus contamination in US meat & poultry #microBEnet

Many news sources are reporting on a new study regarding levels of Staphylococcus in meat: (e.g., see Bacteria seen in nearly half of U.S. meat – CNN.com,  Study Warns of Tainted Meat, and Almost half of meat in stores may have drug-resistant bacteria). The study, by Lance Price, Paul Keim, and colleagues from TGen reports that …

@NYTimes has editorial on hospital acquired infections #microBEnet

The New York Times from yesterday has an editorial discussing hospital acquired infections: Hospitals Shouldn’t Make You Sicker – NYTimes.com. They discuss some new studies in the New England Journal of Medicine as well as some efforts by the Obama Administration.  While there is a lot of research on hospital acquired infections, one thing the Times …

Leave it to a story about Playboy hot tubs to call attention microbes in the built environment #microBEnet

Well, we posted about this story before – Legionella bacteria popped up at a party at the playboy mansion in February.  And now apparently the source of the Legionella bacteria has been traced to … hot tubs (see Playboy Mansion illness traced to hot tub bacteria – Yahoo! News).  Also of note – the epidemiologists used …

Richard Branson getting into microbial diversity (partly) #microBEnet

Richard Branson is planning a deep sea exploration project that will include sampling of microbial diversity with Katrina Edwards and Doug Bartlett and others.  For more information see here: Richard Branson launches Virgin Oceanic: deep-sea exploring submarines – Boing Boing. Perhaps we can convince him to also use his planes and spaceships to sample airborn …