Schools 4 Online

A new fast-acting disinfectant that is effective against bacteria, viruses and other germs could help stop the spread of deadly infections in hospitals, German scientists said on Wednesday.
Researchers from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin said they had developed a fast-acting, practical formula which would kill germs on surgical instruments without damaging them through corrosion.

Disinfectants are the first line of defense against the spread of hospital-acquired infections and effective cleaning of surgical instruments is vital to beating them.

The German formula works against a wide range of germs, including some that survive ordinary disinfectants, such as Mycobacterium avium bacteria which can cause a tuberculosis-type illness and enteroviruses that may cause polio.

Drug-resistant bacteria, the so-called “superbugs,” are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide and poor hygiene among staff is often blamed for the spread of such infections. They kill about 25,000 people a year in Europe and about 19,000 in the United States.

In previous studies, the German team found a simple alkaline detergent that could eradicate prions — disease-causing proteins that are particularly hard to get rid of because they can become fixed onto surfaces through the use of some conventional disinfectants.

In their new study, Michael Beekes and Martin Mielke from the Institute’s hygiene department mixed the alkaline with varying amounts of alcohol and tested its ability to rid surgical instruments of bacteria, viruses and fungi and prions. They found that a mixture with 20 percent alcohol was best.

Beekes said he thought the new disinfectant could have a huge impact on hospital safety protocols.

“Standard formulations that eliminate prions are very corrosive,” he said in the study published in the Journal of General Virology.

“The solution we’ve come up with is not only safer and more material-friendly, but easy to prepare, cheap and highly effective against a wide variety of infectious agents.”

A Dutch study published last week found that the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) superbug, which can cause blood poisoning, spreads not freely but in clusters, suggesting it is spread through healthcare systems by patients being repeatedly admitted to different hospitals.

An exotic type of symmetry — suggested by string theory and theories of high-energy particle physics, and also conjectured for electrons in solids under certain conditions — has been observed experimentally for the first time.
An international team, led by scientists from Oxford University, report in a recent article in Science how they spotted the symmetry, termed E8, in the patterns formed by the magnetic spins in crystals of the material cobalt niobate, cooled to near absolute zero and subject to a powerful applied magnetic field.

The material contains cobalt atoms arranged in long chains and each atom acts like a tiny bar magnet that can point either ‘up’ or ‘down’.

When a magnetic field is applied at right angles to the aligned spin directions, the spins can ‘quantum tunnel’ between the ‘up’ and ‘down’ orientations. At a precise value of the applied field these fluctuations ‘melt’ the ferromagnetic order of the material resulting in a ‘quantum critical’ state.
continue reading…

It’s been implicated as the bacterium that causes ulcers and the majority of stomach cancers, but studies by researchers at Stanford University, UC Davis, and the University of Pittsburgh have found that Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) also may play a protective role — against the worldwide killer, tuberculosis (TB).
In an article appearing online in PLoS ONE, Jay Solnick, UC Davis professor of medicine and microbiology, and his co-authors report that H. pylori infection may enhance immunity against tuberculosis, a disease endemic in many parts of the world, and for which there is no effective vaccine.

“Here is a bacterium that we know is sometimes harmful and that is clearly associated with cancer,” Solnick said. “But it’s not that simple.”

Solnick explains that up until the 20th century, when public health improved and antibiotic use was widespread, virtually everyone was infected with H. pylori. That remains the case today in most developing countries, implying that H. pylori may have evolved with its human host because it confers some selective benefit.

“These new findings suggest that one such benefit may that H. pylori provides protection against tuberculosis, and perhaps other infectious diseases as well,” he said.
continue reading…

The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers.
Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

Queens of the ant Mycocepurus smithii reproduce without fertilization and males appear to be completely absent, report Christian Rabeling, Ulrich Mueller and their Brazilian colleagues in PLoS ONE this week.

“Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant,” says Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. “Asexual species don’t mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don’t generally persist for very long over evolutionary time.”
continue reading…

Scientists are developing mind-to-machine technology that could enable people who cannot speak to communicate using their own brain waves and a computer screen.

Recently, neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Fla., demonstrated that brain waves, focusing on a matrix of letters, can project letters onto a monitor – with the goal of eventually typing out words and sentences. For example, by concentrating on the letter “q,” that “q” will appear on the screen.
The technique requires a craniotomy – that is, a surgical incision into the skull – to place electrodes directly onto the surface of the brain. The implanted devices then record electrical activity produced by the firing of nerve cells.
continue reading…

I suspect by the growing numbers of people who read BioJobBlog, that some of you may be beginning to wonder who I am. While nobody has taken me to task about my credentials or musings to date, I figured it may be worthwhile to share my “story” with those BioJobBlog readers who may be at a crossroads in their careers. I credit my graduate school experiences and PhD degree for the tenacity, perseverance and the ability to reinvent myself during an eclectic, and oft times, circuitous career path.

Taking the Path Less Traveled

I had always liked science but by age 10, I had already decided that I wanted to be a veterinarian. However, after seeing the film Ben Hur at age 11—during which two of the main characters who have leprosy are miraculously cured—I fantasized what it might be like to be able to discover cures for infectious diseases. As corny as it may sound, the movie convinced me that my true calling in life wasn’t veterinary medicine but microbiology. Nevertheless, I attended Cornell University as a pre-veterinary medicine undergraduate with a dual major in animal science and microbiology. During my senior year at Cornell, Dr. Brooks Naylor, my food microbiology professor at the time, invited me to do a senior research project in his laboratory. After several weeks in the laboratory I was hooked and knew that graduate school and not veterinary school was in my future.
continue reading…