BioWeatherMap

"Hand sanitizers also tend to whitewash actual human usage from their laboratory testing. "It's the optimal environment for the hand sanitizer to work," says Jason Tetro, a microbiologist at the University of Ottawa. "This differs greatly from the real-world setting." [Cleaning Up] Mr. Tetro showed the difference by testing three hand-sanitizer products for CBC News last month among eighth graders in Hamilton, Ontario. Three popular sanitizers killed between 46% and 60% of microbes on the students' hands, far short of 99.99%. Bugs that aren't killed by sanitizers aren't necessarily more dangerous than those that are. But the more that remain, the greater the chance of infection, doctors say. The companies whose products were evaluated responded that those lab tests are what health regulators require. "Real-world application is completely subject to interpretation," says Jay Beckman, head of sales for MGS Soapopular Inc., the U.S. distributor of Soapopular, one of the products tested.... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

I wonder whether the popularity of digital currency will be greatly affected by our knowledge about the extent to which physical currency serves as microbial vector. - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

""Encouraging young people to be makers of things, not just consumers of things." -- President Barack Obama" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say. The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"smartDNA Kits: The patented smartDNA nucleic acid detection method represents the future in DNA diagnostics. Investigen is developing this flexible technology for use in laboratories, at point-of-care and in low resource settings - where ever the need for fast molecular diagnostic capabilities is required" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Hawkins began building an electronic sound machine that would produce waves of 16 hertz—the same frequency at which the cilia move—to help break up the mucus. Generating a hum of such a low frequency normally requires van-size subwoofers, and so he spent 15 years honing and shrinking the speakers. Then one day as he was testing a mouthpiece filter for his machine, he noticed that blowing through it sent a slight vibration into his chest. Within five seconds, he sketched out the Lung Flute to amplify the effect. Blowing into the tube flaps a reed-thin sheet of plastic, which vibrates the chest and shakes the mucus until it’s thin and mobile enough for the cilia to usher it up your throat. “I felt so stupid because the answer was so simple,” Hawkins says. Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"We describe the system architecture and template design of "Scratchpads", a data-publishing framework for groups of people to create their own social networks supporting natural history science. Scratchpads cater to the particular needs of individual research communities through a common database and system architecture. This is flexible and scalable enough to support multiple networks, each with its own choice of features, visual design, and constituent data. Our data model supports web services on standardised data elements that might be used by related initiatives such as GBIF and the Encyclopedia of Life. A Scratchpad allows users to organise data around user-defined or imported ontologies, including biological classifications. Automated semantic annotation and indexing is applied to all content, allowing users to navigate intuitively and curate diverse biological data, including content drawn from third party resources. A system of archiving citable pages allows stable referencing with unique identifiers and provides credit to contributors through normal citation processes." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

""I once read about a bacterium which lives only in a single poorly constructed pissoir in a castle. The system didn't drain properly, and when examined, there was a unique species which had evolved there. Do you have any advice on how to track down such a story?"" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Beamer's interest in dust stems comes from her effort to measure people's exposure to toxic substances. In a recent paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, she calculates the proportion of dust that's from indoor sources, compared with the amount from outdoor sources. She figures that one-third comes from indoor inorganic sources like carpet fibers. "Two-thirds comes from both soil tracked in, and the outdoor air particles," Beamer says." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Biomonitoring measurements are the most health-relevant assessments of exposure because they indicate the amount of the chemical that actually gets into people from all environmental sources (e.g., air, soil, water, dust, food) combined, rather than the amount that may get into them." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Help OPAL scientists with important research, learn new skills, have fun OPAL is running five surveys across England to learn more about the state of our environment, and we’d like everyone to get involved." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"EpiCollect: Linking Smartphones to Web Applications for Epidemiology, Ecology and Community Data Collection" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Using a newly developed metagenomics pipeline, researchers involved with the Galaxy project identified bug, plant, and bacterial species from material splattered on cars after two road trips." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"M3" stands for "Metagenomics, Metadata and MetaAnalysis" and was the title of a GSC hosted SIG at ISMB 2009...The Consortium is now working on a vision for a future "M5 platform" - adding both Models and MetaInfrastructure to the M3 concept. - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

Source of sequencing service for garage microbiomics (hat tip Mac) - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

Tracking new synthetic life forms is another possibility for the bioweathermap. Great video by daisy. - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"There are some things it is better just not to think about. Like the 10,000 bacteria you inhale with each breath in the average office building. Or the 10 million bacteria in each glass of tap water. Microbiologists have now added something else to the list of things too gross to contemplate: the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower. Showers in New York carry a particularly high dose of a microbe related to tuberculosis called Mycobacterium avium. The bacterium and its close cousins can cause a variety of exotic chest complaints, including lifeguard’s lung, hot tub lung and Lady Windermere’s syndrome." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials. As parasites and bacteria seeped into drinking water, residents suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses and severe ear infections." The bioweathermap should do a survey of well water in these regions... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Researchers from the University of Colorado swabbed dozens of showerheads in nine American cities, using ribosomal RNA sequences to catalog the microbes present. While most of the microbes in the showerheads were harmless and fairly predictable, the team was surprised to find a potentially pathogenic species called Mycobacterium avium in several showerheads from the metropolitan areas tested." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"A Genomic Encyclopedia for Bacteria and Archaea: To test the feasibility of the GEBA approach, JGI is undertaking a pilot project in collaboration with DSMZ to sequence 100 bacterial and archaeal genomes based on the phylogenetic positions of organisms in the tree of life. The organism selection process for the pilot project is being based on a combination of objective analysis of the rRNA tree of life and consultation with a scientific advisory board. All genome sequence data will be released to the community through the JGI web site and Genbank. In addition, the JGI is building tools to enable undergraduates to participate in the manual annotation of the GEBA genomes. The long-term goal of the GEBA project would be to generate reference genomes for every major and minor group of bacteria and archaea. This could represent something on the order of 5,000 genomes. This amount of sequencing is not beyond the capabilities of the current capacity of major genome sequencing centers.... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Assembling the Tree of Life To construct a phylogeny for the 1.7 million described species of life. Program Solicitation NSF 03-536, National Science Foundation" - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"Some BioWatch sensors resemble a phone booth topped with an air intake and radio antenna. Couriers collect air filters from the sensors and deliver them to military facilities or public health laboratories. There, technicians use Livermore-developed signatures to detect the presence of target pathogens. If a pathogen were detected, officials would examine wind patterns in the area of the contaminated sensor and take action to protect the population. In summer 2003, BioWatch sensors in Houston detected fragments of Francisella tularensis, a bacterium found in rabbits, prairie dogs, and rodents that can spread to humans and cause tularemia. Health officials concluded there had been no attack. Instead, the sensor had detected tiny amounts of F. tularensis naturally present in the environment. Although F. tularensis was known to be endemic in Texas, this was the first time it was detected in an aerosol sample. The Department of Homeland Security announced that the incident marked the... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"The application provides a greater user experience in discovering species distribution through advanced zooming, opportunities to view the data publishers' contribution and to link back to the GBIF Data Portal. This mapping feature is available as open source for other initiatives to use; contact Tim Robertson at the GBIF Secretariat (trobertson@gbif.org)." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Beijing Genomics Institute-Shenzhen will lead a project with other Chinese Universities that will begin development of a genomic encyclopedia of microbes that exist in China. The "Ten Thousand Microbial Genomes Project" will serve as a companion of the international 1000 Genomes Project, and will "focus on the systematic research of highly diversified microbial resources in China at the genome level," BGI-Shenzhen said recently. Researchers plan to use the latest genomic sequencing technologies to study microbial metabolism, gene expression, and signal transduction, and to study how these microbes influence the environment and humans. The microbes the project plans to study include achaea, bacteria, fungi, algae, and viruses from conventional environments such as soil, air, and water, and from extreme environments such as glaciers, deep ocean hot springs, and outer space. Organizations partnering with the BGI-Shenzhen on the microbe project include... more... - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

What bugs live in the oilsands? Need to get the DNA extracted first..."In a PNAS paper scheduled to appear online this week, UBC and Genome Sciences researchers reported that they could extract DNA from oil sand using their non-linear electrophoretic technology." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

"We are so disconnected from the living world that we can live in the midst of a mass extinction, of the rapid invasion everywhere of new and noxious species, entirely unaware that anything is happening. Happily, changing all this turns out to be easy. Just find an organism, any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle — anywhere, and they are everywhere — and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound...meditate, luxuriate in its beetle-ness, its daffodility. Then find a name for it. Learn science’s name, one of countless folk names, or make up your own. To do so is to change everything, including yourself. Because once you start noticing organisms, once you have a name for particular beasts, birds and flowers, you can’t help seeing life and the order in it, just where it has always been, all around you." - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

Biogeography of bugs as determined from windshield scrapings + nextgen sequencing! - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet

26,000 people signed up to track bees in the U.S. this year - Jason Bobe from Bookmarklet