By Restless
Dangerous bacteria, resistant to all antibiotics, have benefited from our war adventure in Iraq. The Grand daddy of them all is something called Acinetobacter baumannii. It got its start (possibly) from some contaminated medical supplies shipped from Germany to a medical facility in Iraq, Ibn Sina Hospital, at the start of the war. Since […]

From CNN.COM: 
Mysterious red cells might be aliens
As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.
In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he […]

 
Woo hoo!   The Bacteria Trifecta! 
From USA Today: 
Evolution seen in a yogurt cup
By Robert C. Cowen
If you want to see evolution in action, check out your local market’s dairy section. One of the bacteria in yogurt is undergoing an extreme makeover. It’s shedding parts of its genetic heritage wholesale as it morphs into an organism that […]

I remember reading somewhere that over 6 lbs of the typical persons body weight is made up of the bacteria in your colon.   Something to think about the next time you’re trying to lose weight.
From YahooNews:  
Gene experts say we are not entirely human
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - We may not be entirely human, gene experts said on […]

From NewScientistTech.COM: 
Chocolate generates electrical power
Willy Wonka could have powered his Great Glass Elevator on hydrogen produced from his chocolate factory.
Microbiologist Lynne Mackaskie and her colleagues at the University of Birmingham in the UK have powered a fuel cell by feeding sugar-loving bacteria chocolate-factory waste. “We wanted to see if we tipped chocolate into one end, […]

From YahooNews: 
US woman gets 1.27 million dollars after losing maggot-infested leg
MIAMI (AFP) - A US court awarded 1.27 million dollars to a woman whose leg had to be amputated after surgery left it infected and filled with maggots, the Palm Beach Post reported.
The 72-year-old house cleaner blamed the staff at a West Palm Beach, Florida […]

 
From MSNBC.COM:
Man, son, neighbor swallowed by cesspool
Trip to get Sunday paper from lawn turns into scene ‘like a horror picture’
HUNTINGTON, N.Y. - A 71-year-old man who went outside in the rain to pick up the Sunday newspaper plunged into a cesspool in his front yard, and his son and neighbor were sucked in when they […]

 
From MSNBC.COM/NEWSWEEK;
The War on HPV
A new vaccine that prevents cervical cancer could be available soon.
By Claudia Kalb and Karen Springen
April 24, 2006 issue - Amelia Togba-Addy, a nurse at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, had always been in good health. But last October her gynecologist called with disturbing news: Togba-Addy’s latest Pap smear showed […]

 
From Indiana University:
Nature’s strongest glue could be used as a medical adhesive
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — A bacterium that lives in rivers, streams and human aqueducts uses nature’s strongest glue to stay in one place, according to new research by Indiana University Bloomington and Brown University scientists reported in next week’s (April 11) Proceedings of the National […]

    
            BEFORE                                  AFTER
From SPACE.COM:
Harnessing the Power of Poop
By Karen Miller
On a two-year trip to Mars, according to one estimate, a crew of six humans will generate more than six tons of solid organic waste–much of it feces. So what do you do with all that?
Right now, astronaut waste gets shipped back to Earth. But […]

 
     
         Before                          After
 
From MSNBC.COM:
Sewage spill forces Waikiki beach closures
Bacteria in millions of gallons of wastewater ‘has kind of spread’
HONOLULU - Warning signs to keep out of the water were posted Wednesday along part of Waikiki’s world-famous beaches because of high bacteria levels from a massive sewage spill.
(more here)
Maybe they should rename […]

 
From BBC News:
Nano circuit offers big promise
The first computer circuit to be built on a single molecule has been unveiled by researchers in the US.  It was assembled on a single carbon nanotube, a standard component of any nanotechnologist’s toolkit.
The circuit is less than a fifth of the width of a human hair and can […]

 
From MSNBC:                      
Flesh-eating germ kills woman in three days
North Carolina nursing assistant cut her finger on a wheelchair
DUNN, N.C. - North Carolina health officials are investigating the death of a woman who died last week of a flesh-eating bacteria three days after accidentally jamming her hand in a wheelchair while working at a nursing home.
(more here)
Ack… […]