Ick
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2010So I was at the ASM meeting last week, and one of the talks I heard was by Kim Ware about Clostridium difficile infection control: how one hospital learned to contain and prevent outbreaks (Note: these are from my notes; I haven't downloaded the presentation yet). C. difficile is a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis. It is often associated with antibiotic therapy and stays in healthcare environments: this is primarily a 'hospital disease.' While most cases result in diarrhea (which isn't trivial if you're already very sick), eleven…
mikethemadbiologist | November 9, 2009No, not that stuff (well, actually, yes, that stuff too, but I definitely don't want to know about it). One of the important tools in fighting infectious disease is disinfecting surfaces. Which brings me to a recent paper about cruise ships and cleanliness. In June 2006, 43 norovirus outbreaks occurred on thirteen vessels. Noroviruses can cause severe vomitting and diarrhea, and in children, particularly infants, can be deadly (also see Aetiology). In the paper, the authors decided to examine how often bathroom surfaces on cruise ships are cleaned:
Methods. Trained health care…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2009A couple days ago, while waiting for the T, a guy about ten feet away sneezed several times without even attempting to cover his face; he didn't even make a 'matador', bullshit fake effort. Because of the angle of the light and what not, I could easily see the massive spray of mucus flying out of his nose. I mean stuff everywhere. Kinda like this:
(from here)
Long time readers of this blog will know my battle cry, "WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS!", but other forms of public hygiene, such as not spraying your snot hither and yon, matter too. In fact, it's important enough that public health…
mikethemadbiologist | August 16, 2008Here's an image that is...unsettling:
REUTERS/Larry Downing
(by way of Dependable Renegade)
Seriously, I think Bush's image handlers are just mailing it in at this point. A male politician above a certain age should never appear in the same frame as a woman half his age (or younger), particularly when she's wearing a bikini.
It will not end well.
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2008Commenting on John Edwards, Joe Klein makes two excellent points:
--Just about anyone under the age of 60 who has lived in this permissive society during the past 40 years, has done something that might be unfit for a Hallmark Greeting Card. In fact, I have profound qualms about any would-be politician who hasn't allowed him- or herself a moment of untrammeled human or chemical exploration. I fear that the media have driven an awful lot of interesting people away from public service for reasons that would have seemed extreme to the second generation of New England Puritans.
--These sort of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 3, 2008This is why you should read local weeklies. From the Back Bay Sun:
GROPE PATROL EFFECTIVE
Sgt. O'Connor of the MBTA Police gave a presentation on transit crime at local subway stops that highlighted the effectiveness of the city's current undercover operation aimed at deterring groping on the subway.
"Many more people are reporting incidents because of the patrol," said O'Connor. This past week, the patrol arrested a man on the Green Line when it was noticed that he did not appear to be going anywhere, simply riding back and forth between Kenmore and Park Street.
The plainclothes officers…
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2008No, that's accurate:
The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected with at least one of the diseases, federal health officials reported Tuesday.
Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to 19 were infected with at least one of the diseases monitored in the study -- human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite.
The 50 percent figure compared with 20 percent of white teenagers, health officials and researchers said at a news…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2007
Yes, it's LOLStaphylococcus. They don't call me the Mad Biologist for nuthin'
A colleague of mind sent along this paper, "Nose Picking and Nasal Carriage of Staphylococcus aureus":
OBJECTIVE. Nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus is an important risk factor for S. aureus infection and a reservoir for methicillin-resistant S. aureus [MRSA]. We investigated whether nose picking was among the determinants of S. aureus nasal carriage.
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS. The study cohort comprised 238 patients who visited the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) disease outpatient clinic of a tertiary…
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2007
In some wickedly funny satire, Amanda Marcotte shows us how to create an anti-menstruation movement:
The "abortion is icky" argument is such that the anti-choice crowd could easily start agitating for a ban on menstruation without skipping a beat. The fact that menstruation is incredibly common shouldn't slow them down; after all, the anti-choice position demands that you believe that more than 1/3 of American women are murderers. Menstruation is, except maybe to a handful of insistent earth mother crunchy feminists, generally regarded as pretty icky. I throw a bloody tampon at you, you'll…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2007We're getting worse at washing our hands according to the Baltimore Sun. One thing I've said many times before, but it bears repeating: the best way to avoid getting sick is to limit contact with someone else who is sick. While that sounds obvious, one very good way to do that is handwashing. Handwashing breaks the 'transmission network' and essentially isolates the sick person. If you view preventing infectious disease as a question of how can I protect myself from disease, then we've already lost. The best measures (vaccination and handwashing) aren't just about protecting yourself,…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2007This is all Massachusetts needs--an invasion of rock snot:
Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called "rock snot" is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists....
Over the past 10 years, the algae with a scientific name of Didymosphenia geminata, or didymo, has turned up in California, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee....
The algae has the potential to bloom into thick masses with…
mikethemadbiologist | June 5, 2007Inspired by this Jeffrey Feldman post, I'm putting together a post about abortion, evolution, and the dislike by some scientists of framing. Feldman argues that reframing abortion is necessary to deal with anti-abortionists like Rev. Joel C. Hunter:
Abortion continues to be one of the most hurtful and divisive facts of our nation. I come from the part of the faith community that is very strongly pro-life. I know you're pro-choice, but you have indicated that you would like to reduce the number of abortions. Could you see yourself, with millions of voters in a pro-life camp, creating a common…
mikethemadbiologist | June 5, 2007...and order anything that comes with "assorted meats." You see, I thought that would mean mammals and birds. Instead, we got this:
We couldn't even identify in which phylum half of this stuff was. There was one thing that couldn't make it past my nose. When we asked what it was, we were told "Chinese seafood." As you might guess, there was a little left over:
Oh well. The braised duck was very good...
mikethemadbiologist | April 3, 2007You can't go wrong with the title "Residence time and food contact time effects on transfer of Salmonella
Typhimurium from tile, wood and carpet: testing the five-second rule." And it only gets better.
Here's the abstract:
Aims Three experiments were conducted to determine the survival and transfer of Salmonella Typhimurium from wood, tile or carpet to bologna (sausage) and bread.
Methods and Results: Experiment 1. After 28 days, 1·5 to 2·5 log10 CFU cm-2 remained on tile from and the more concentrated media facilitated the survival of S. Typhimurium compared with the more dilute solutions…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2006That's what GrrlScientist asks about the 26% who don't think Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert should resign and/or lose the Speakership over Foleygate. I think most of that 26% falls into a declarative mindset. In other words, once Hastert is defined as a Good Person, he can do no wrong. I'm actually pleasantly surprised the percentage isn't higher.
We see examples of this way of thinking (such as it is) all the time. As a White House staffer told a potential candidate for a position on the National Drug Abuse Council, when the candidate said he supported needle exchange:…
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2006Well, that's not what it was called. I had forgotten that, in 1999, the Republican leadership opposed legislation that would have outlawed ongoing sexual slavery in the American terrority of Saipan. And who led the charge? Dennis Hastert. For $20,000 in campaign donations. (But, but, but... Bill Clinton had consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky!)
What the Republicans did in Saipan was far worse than what Foley did--hard as that is to believe. These are awful, awful people. We are so far beyond honest debates about policy; instead, we must oppose a truly corrupt political apparatus…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2006...Al-NAMBLA? (which refers to this) driftglass explains:
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who was the pervert that solicited sex from this page? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated Republican organizations known as al NAMBLA. They are the same Republicans who stood by the Rotting Corpse of Tom DeLay; the same Republicans who stood by while Jack Abramoff looted and perverted the American government.
Al NAMBLA is to Republican Powerbrokering what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not merely making money; its goal is…
mikethemadbiologist | September 30, 2006Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned yesterday because he sexually propositioned a sixteen year-old congressional page. That's awful enough--well, that and Foley was the Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, but what's even worse is that the House Republican leadership knew about this for months and did nothing. Well, they did one thing: they warned the pages to stay away from from Foley. In case you're wondering, no Democrat was informed, even those on the relevant committees.
The Party of Values never ceases to amaze me. Yet it gets even more bizarre. Even though…