07 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Using City Sewage to Survey a City's Microbiome
The team gathered samples over the course of a year from sewage treatment plants in 71 different cities in 31 states, chosen for their geographic spread and range of obesity rates. The leanest city sampled was Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with an obesity rate of 13.5 percent, while the heaviest was St. Joseph, Missouri, with a rate of 37.4 percent.
Bacteria from human waste make up just a small proportion of the bacteria found in sewage. But using DNA sequencing, the researchers could identi...Folksonomies: bacteria public health
Folksonomies: bacteria public health
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notes15 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Bacillus Vampiris
Bacteria could be the answer to the vampire.
Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he’d been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in. There he’d been, crouching and content with his iron-bound theory. Now he’d straightened up and taken his finger out. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.
The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires had spread it?
Could their nightly marau...Folksonomies: science fiction horror
Folksonomies: science fiction horror
1 notes
notesA bacteria that fuels the muscles even after the heart stops pumping blood, that instills a repulsion of the sun and garlic to survive.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Microbes Rule the World
Microbes make up 80 percent of all biomass, says microbiologist Carl Woese. In one-fifth of a teaspoon of seawater, there are a million bacteria (and 10 million viruses), Craig Venter says, adding, “If you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet. This is the planet of the bacteria.” That means that most of the planet’s living metabolism is microbial. When James Lovelock was trying to figure out where the gases come from that make the Earth’s atmosphere such an artifact of ...
1 Stewart Brand describes the state of our world, engineered by microbes and ourselves as the vehicles for their propagation in many cases.
29 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
We are Machines that Carry Genes
We are survival machines, but 'we' does not mean just people. It
embraces all animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses. The total number of
survival machines on earth is very difficult to count and even the total
number of species is unknown. Taking just insects alone, the number of
living species has been estimated at around three million, and the
number of individual insects may be a million million million.
Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and
in their i... 1 notes
notesThe Gene's-eye view of evolution is very useful.
20 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Relative Sizes of Structures in the Brain
Linear measure- ments and dimensions generally are given in microns or micrometers (µm) (1 µm equals one- millionth of a meter) or nanometers (nm) (1 nm or millimicron equals one-billionth of a meter). About 240,000 µm equal one inch.
As a reference, the following are the dimen-
sions of some non-neural structures: human ovum, 100 µm; cross-section of a skeletal muscle fiber, 10-100 µm; erythrocytes, 8–10 µm; bacteria, 0.1–8 µm; and viruses, 0.15–0.5 µm.
Cell bodies of neurons... 1 notes
notesInteresting to see how they compare to the sizes of other small objects.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Parasites are Always Out There, Waiting
But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses. 1 notes
notesWe must be ever-vigilant.
24 MAY 2012 by TGAW
H.G. Wells on Immunity and Natural Selection - The Birthr...
These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things--taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance--our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our mic...Folksonomies: evolution
Folksonomies: evolution
A great passage from War of the Worlds
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Wonders of the Universe
There is a place with four suns in the sky – red, white, blue, and yellow; two of
them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth – and made of diamond.
There are atomic nuclei a mile across that rotate thirty times a second.
There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition
of bacteria.
There are stars leaving the Milky Way. There are immense gas c...Carl Sagan describes some of the amazing things science and astronomy have discovered in our universe.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Bacteria Evolve to Process Lactose in a Test Tube
But “laboratory” adaptations can also be more complex, involving
the evolution of whole new biochemical systems. Perhaps the ultimate
challenge is simply to take away a gene that a microbe needs to survive
in a particular environment, and see how it responds. Can it evolve
a way around this problem? The answer is usually yes. In a dramatic
experiment, Barry Hall and his colleagues at the University of Rochester
began a study by deleting a gene from E. coli. This gene produces an
enzyme th...Folksonomies: evolution experiment
Folksonomies: evolution experiment
1 notes
notesScientists blocked a gene for digesting lactose in bacteria, which then mutated to have the digestive function taken over by another gene producing an enzyme, which then got progressively selected for efficiency.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Antibiotics Evolve Bacteria in the Gut
New antibiotics have been coming out at frequent intervals since
then, and bacteria have evolved resistance to just about every one of them. Nowadays, the most
ominous example is MRSA (methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which has succeeded in
making many hospitals positively dangerous places to visit. Another menace is ' C. diff.' (
Clostridium difficile). Here again, we have natural selection favouring strains that are resistant to
antibiotics; but the effect is overlain by anothe...As the bacteria adapt to the hostile environment.
