An Antibacterial … What?
Among the deluge of press releases I see each day, there are inevitably a few odd ones. This news from computer technology maker ATEN, however, was exceptionally odd. It seems they've developed a new...
View ArticleBringing Back an Oldie to Fight TB
In a new paper in PLoS Medicine, researchers have stumbled onto a promising "new" treatment for that resurgent scourge, tuberculosis:"Rifapentine is back," says Johns Hopkins infectious disease...
View ArticleHappy Hand Washing Day
Today is the United Nations’ first worldwide Hand Washing Day. Yes, it means exactly what it sounds like. As the BBC reports: “The message we are really trying to get out is the importance of correctly...
View ArticleIt’s World Toilet Day: Did You Do Squat?
Today is World Toilet Day. This is not a joke. In fact, it’s deadly serious. Follow the link for some sobering statistics about what inadequate plumbing means for billions of people.
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Microbes Munched Macondo’s Methane
Back in May, I blogged about a proposal to monitor dissolved methane levels in the Gulf of Mexico as a surrogate marker for oil. The idea was that the Deepwater Horizon blowout was spewing a mixture of...
View ArticleHigh-Definition Microscopy Movies – Now in 3-D
In a paper appearing right now in Nature Methods, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm campus describe a new type of microscopy that’s just chock full of awesomeness. By...
View ArticleI’ll Have Mine Well Done, Please
Favorite comment below this YouTube video: the one dubbing it “Soylent Brown.” Best moment in the video: 1:32 – look at the label on the refrigerator. Comforting thought: if McDonald’s adopts this, it...
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Sewage Treatment, Coral Disease, and Koch’s Postulates
Coral reefs are in a tight spot these days. Increasing CO2 levels and rising ocean temperatures aren’t doing them much good, but their biggest problems are more direct. Overfishing is wiping out...
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Exploring the Sourdoughome
I love it when my interests intersect, so this new report from researchers in Italy and Belgium, on the microbiota of sourdough breads, definitely caught my attention. As the authors explain: This...
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Pseudomonas: Even More Bad-Assed Than We Thought
The first time I met the genus Pseudomonas, I was a brand-new graduate student doing a rotation in David Figurski’s lab at Columbia University. Dave works on “promiscuous” plasmids that can move to...
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