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Estimating influenza-related sick leave in Norway: Was work absenteeism higher during the H1N1 pandemic?

The impact of influenza on work absenteeism is poorly documented. Researchers used data from the national registry and Norway Post AS (>14,000 employees) to explore sickness absence patterns from 2005/06 through 2009/10 in Norway. Annually, an estimated 2.868% (mean 95% confidence interval (CI):... Read More

PROBIOTICS TO DECONTAMINATE YOUR GUT?

Heavy metals and other toxins frequently contaminate food and water. The culprits read like a litany of bad actors—lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, chromium—but their numbers run into the thousands. Microbes have long been enlisted for bioremediation, but they also have the potential to protect ... Read More

TWiP 49: Making sense of toxo and heme



Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier


Vincent and Dickson discus... Read More

Sea bacterium solves lactose intolerance

A new species of bacteria living 1,200 metres deep at freezing temperatures in the Bay of Bengal is all set to solve the universal problem of lactose intolerance in human beings. Lactose is a type of sugar present in milk. Two-thirds of people around the world cannot digest lactose, which may ca... Read More

The Emerging Role of Social Media in Public Health

Over the past fifteen years, Internet technology has significantly changed the landscape of public health surveillance and epidemic intelligence gathering. Disease and outbreak data is disseminated not only through formal online announcements by government agencies, but also through informal cha... Read More

Danger in the blood: U-M scientists show how antibiotic-resisting bacterial infections may form (Press Release)

New research may help explain why hundreds of thousands of Americans a year get sick – and tens of thousands die – after bacteria get into their blood. It also suggests why some of those bloodstream infections resist treatment with even the most powerful antibiotics.

In a new paper in the Jou... Read More

Two Chicken Vaccines Have Combined To Create A New Strain Of Virus

Two chicken vaccines have recombined to produce more virulent viruses in Sydney and Melbourne, research has found, prompting the regulator to examine new controls over the approval and use of veterinary vaccines.

A study by a team from the Asia-Pacific Centre for Animal Health at the Universi... Read More

A to Z of microbial epidemiology / pathogens by Jennifer Gardy

A wonderful musical A - Z of nasty microbes and related topics. By Jennifer Gardy and friends. Read More

Anti-bacterial chemical triclosan shows up in rivers, causes concern

Three decades ago, some companies began adding a chemical called triclosan to their products and tried to convince consumers that their hand soap or toothpaste was better because it was “anti-bacterial.”

Now, scientists are finding traces of that compound in the environment, and it’s causing ... Read More

TWiP 50: Antagonism in the mosquito midgut



Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier


Vincent and Dickson reveal... Read More

TWiM 43 Letters

Jake writes:

Hello Vincent,
I've been listening to your TWiM podcast now for a few weeks as I am a student at SDSU taking a microbial genetics class with stanley maloy.  It be be ... Read More

This Christmas, Give a Holiday Germ Card

We've all been there. The holidays are approaching and there's that one person on our list for whom we have no idea what to give. It's a common problem that is usually resolved with the purchase of a gift card from a local retailer. From hardware stores to electronic shops to the bookstore, cons... Read More

Don’t Panic—Ebola Isn’t Heading For You

An outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever that began in early July 2012 has involved at least 36 individuals and 16 deaths. So far the disease has been confined to a rural region west of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The subject of Richard Preston’s scary The Hot Zone, Ebola virus is newsworthy b... Read More

Bacteria Ate 200,000 Tons of Oil After Deepwater Horizon Spill

Researchers from the Univ. of Rochester and Texas A&M Univ. have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally occurring bacteria that exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and ... Read More

BacterioFiles Micro Edition 98 - Modified Microbes Make Mosquito Midguts Murder Malaria

This episode: Scientists engineer mosquito gut bacteria to fight malaria!





... Read More

Mucor sp. fungal organism

Under a magnification of 200x, and using a lactophenol cotton blue mount fixation technique, this photomicrograph reveals some of the ultrastructural morphology exhibited by a Mucor sp. fungal organism. This image depicts two sporangia, a mature structure, which had ruptured, releasing its conte... Read More

Keep 32 Molecule Kills Cavity-Causing Bacteria, Could Make The World A Better Place

Researchers Jose Cordova of Yale University and Erich Astudillo of Chile’s Universidad de Santiago discovered a molecule they call Keep 32 that kills the bacteria responsible for all the trauma you suffered as a child, lying down blinded by the light as a masked man poked bits of metal in your m... Read More

Bacteria in guts of elderly differ from those of the young

We are teeming with microscopic life. Scientists recently reported on the billions of bacteria and fungi that grow inside us, finding a lot of diversity from person to person — and from spot to spot on the human body.

Those findings were in 242 young adults (ages 18 to 40) in exceptionally go... Read More

A Few Thoughts About the 2012 San Francisco ASM General Meeting by Elio Schaechter

I recently returned from the ASM yearly general meeting in San Francisco. It happens to be 60 years, no less, since I attended my first such event, that one in Chicago. In those days, many members attended a giant banquet as part of the event, I well remember. As a poor graduate student, I could... Read More

Interfering with Quorum Sensing Behavior May Be the Achilles Heel of A. baumanni

Acinetobacter baumanni, a pathogenic bacterium that is a poster child of deadly hospital-acquired infections, is one tough customer. It resists most antibiotics, is seemingly immune to disinfectants, and can survive desiccation with ease. Indeed, the prevalence with which it infects soldiers wou... Read More

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