Fungi Police…Uh, what?

The Oxford University came out with a new study of a fungi, nicknamed the ‘diversity police.’ These fungi called ‘netted stinkhorn fungus (Dictyophora sp.) is found in the Belize rainforest. They have found that it helps regulate the diversity within the forests by making themselves the dominant species. These fungi spread super quickly between closely-packed plants of the same species, preventing them from dominating and allowing a wider variety of plants to grow in that area. In the plant world ‘close relatives make bad neighbors.’ Long story short, these fungi, along with many other types help the plant species to be more diverse. If there are not fungi, then the dominating plant takes over as much as it can, leaving no room for anything else to grow. When the fungi are placed there, they help keep them separate, allowing huge amounts of diversity.

I thought this article was going to be a lot more interesting than it was. It was very boring and really did not have that much information stuffed into it. I think that people who are researching things like this and trying to find articles that interest them should not even bother with this article. I seem to get almost every one of my blogs off of the same ‘Science Daily’ website, but some are definitely a lot better than others. If I was someone highly interested in fungi, looking for interesting articles, I guess this one is a good place to start, but DEFINITELY look more into it. This article was extraordinarily open ended and really didn’t have much to say besides these plants helped create diversity. Woohoo. Yay for them. Where is the action and the fun? This article was very uninteresting and whoever wrote it had very little information about what they were trying to talk about. I think they should’ve had more specifications about what other kinds of fungi did this and what types of plants they helped grow. Another key thing they missed out on is where all of this is taking place. I mean, is the fungi growing in my back yard doing this amazing thing too? Or is it ONLY in the Belize rainforest. I’m not sure, but I was really disappointed with this reading.

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140122133827.htm

Image: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140122133827.htm

Antibacterial Hand Soap Not So Helpful?

            After years of the Food and Drug Administration saying that the chemicals in items such as soap and toothpaste are doing more harm than good, they are now requiring soap manufacturers to demonstrate that the substances are safe. If they prove to be unsafe, they are requiring that they have to be taken out all together. Public health experts have been trying to warn that people who use these risk scrambling hormones in children and promoting drug resistant infections. When these tests were run on animals, they were proven to disrupt the normal development of their reproductive systems and metabolism. They say that if these chemicals could do these types of things to the animals, then the possibility that the same effects would be applied to the humans as well. The centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the chemicals were in the urine of three-quarters of Americans. These studies also showed that these harsh chemicals were actually no more effective at killing bacteria than regular soap and water.

          I thought that this article was very mediocre. There was not a lot of information and the article was actually quite vague. There was not a lot of information about the reasons why these chemicals were so bad for the health of people. There was absolutely no information on the specific microbes that can cause these illnesses. I think that specific information such as this would’ve been very beneficial to the impact of this article. I feel like anyone reading this article would not have been very impressed because it really didn’t have an impact on me when I read it and I was actually every interested in finding out more about this topic.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/health/fda-to-require-proof-that-antibacterial-soaps-are-safe.html?_r=0

Image: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/16/fda-antibacterial-soap/4038907/

Salmonella Never Leaves!

Salmonella; a form of bacteria that we’ve all heard of. We’ve all heard how dangerous and even deadly it can be,…but is there any true way to rid ourselves of it? According to researchers from the National University of Ireland, once salmonella bacteria gets into the foods we eat, it has the chance to form a biofilm on surfaces throughout the food facilities. This biofilm is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to kill. Using three different forms of disinfectants, none of them were capable of killing off the bacteria after it had been allowed a short seven days to grow. Even soaking the biofilms in disinfectant for over an hour failed to kill them. Why have this study now? There was a European outbreak in which 160 people from 10 different countries became sick with gastroenteritis (vomiting and diarrhea) from a form of Salmonella. The outbreak was traced back to meat from a food facility. What sparked their interest was the fact that the Salmonella seemed to be coming from a part of the factory where the meat was no longer raw, but had already been cooked all the way through. They wanted to know what made this strand of Salmonella strong enough to make it through the high temperature environments. They found that they were able to survive through creating dense layer of biofilm on the surfaces throughout the facility.

I found this article to be interesting because there are over a million cases of Salmonella per year, with 23,000 hospitalizations and a minimum of 450 fatalities. That is a huge amount of such a tiny microbe. If researchers could find a better way of fighting such a dangerous bacteria, our food would not only be healthier, but there would be less deaths from it. I do think that the article should’ve touched a bit more on how Salmonella actually develops in a place such as a food industry. It would be beneficial to know how it actually got there in the first place. Other than that, it really makes you think about where and what you may be unknowingly eating. Yuck!

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140115172952.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
Image: http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/foodborne-illness-outbreaks/an-unforgettable-salmonella-illness/

Treat Your Sore Throats!

Sore throats; we all get them, we all hate them, we all wish they’d just go away. However, taking them more seriously may soon become a must. Parents need to take sore throats more seriously and treat them more aggressively when they are discovered. Thousands of people unnecessarily die each year. These lives could be saved simply by obtaining penicillin. The strep throat virus can be dangerous if not properly taken care of. Caused by Group A streptococcus bacteria, it can lead to rheumatic heart disease which causes the antibodies within the immune system to gang up and attack the heart muscles and joints and everything is just absolutely awful and going haywire. Long story short, you do NOT want to have this happen to you. Over 500,000 people die per year thanks to this easily prevented problem. However, it is not always so easy to detect. Taking a strep test can take days to grow enough bacteria to determine what is growing. And even once it is determined to be strep, the heart disease is very easy to miss. In fact only 10% of the cases are caught early enough and by the simple use of a stethoscope. Having one shot of penicillin, nine days within the time of having strep throat will usually prevent any kind of heart damage. However, by the time the strep tests come back positive, it may be hard to catch it.

I think this article does a good job at describing the causes and effects of strep throat. However, I do think that it should’ve been a little more specific when it came to how severe this problem is. The article states that it causes many deaths and is a huge problem, but in reality, how many people do we know who have had this problem? I know I’ve had strep throat numerous times and as far as I’m concerned, I seem to be doing just fine.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/health/a-start-to-saving-lives-treating-sore-throats.html?_r=0

Picture: http://www.fastmed.com/strep-throat

Bacteria Linked to Premature Water Breakage? What?

It is not uncommon for a woman to experience premature breaking of her water during pregnancy. However, when this does occur, it is not taken lightly as there are often serious long-term health effects for both the mother and the child. According to Amy P. Murtha, M.D. at Duke University School of Medicine, new research is suggesting that having a high presence of bacteria can play a key role in these events. Their research has demonstrated that high levels of bacteria in the chorion part of the fetal membrane, causes it to become frail and very thin. When the membrane becomes this consistency, there is no possible way for it to stay completely strong, causing a major rupture and ultimately leading to the fluids to leak out. In their recent studies, they tested to see which ones if not all membranes had bacteria levels correlating with the thinning of the cell layers. They weren’t all that surprised at what they found; the amount of bacteria in the membranes with rupture sites were far higher, but there was varying amounts of bacteria in all of the membranes. The researches are now working to discover exactly what types of bacterium are found in the premature water breakage patients, versus the ones found in regular patients.

I thought this article was interesting because when you hear about this happening to someone, the first thing that you think isn’t, ‘oh, it must be the bacteria floating around inside them doing this to them.’ It never ceased to amaze me what these microscopic things are capable of. 

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109003756.htm

Image:https://www.google.com/search?q=water+breaking&client=firefox-a&hs=JYK&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=QEIhU562FYGhqwH45YHICA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1280&bih=564#channel=fflb&q=water+breaking+cartoon&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=H2Jt1bMQ1fsVXM%253A%3B0IdflrLLR1l7gM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fskreened.com%252Frender-product%252Fg%252Fa%252Fk%252Fgakgkkqngonaykubgpsh%252Fimage.w174h200f3.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fskreened.com%252Fkidlings%252Fwater-breaker%3B174%3B200

 

Prolonging Life? Awesome!

            “Your age is your number one risk factor for almost every disease,” says Dr. J Craig Venter in an interview about his new idea. Dr. Venter is a 67 year-old entrepreneur in search of a way to figure out how people can live longer and healthier lives; he has recently started a new company, Human Longevity, in order to do so. His plan is to sequence the genomes of both sick and healthy people, ranging in age from children to His company has paired up with Metabolon, another company, in hopes of measuring the chemicals in their blood as well. Dr. Venter thinks that all of these tests in collaboration may lead to some actual findings. The more they can find out about the body and what age does to it, the better. However, the goal is not to make people live forever, but to make “100 years old be the next 60.” Combining all of these processes with the ability to examine over 40,000 human genomes a year, there may actually be a path leading to the answers. If slowing the process of aging can successfully be done, this could lead to preventing many diseases instead of treating one disease at a time. The key to all of this is we need more information about the molecular causes of aging in order to be able to experiment with increasing life years.

This article was extraordinarily interesting and was written really well.  It really makes you wonder what exactly we will be able to do in the future. I never thought it would even be a possibility to extend human life, but apparently they are slowing discovering an answer to this.

Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/business/in-pursuit-of-longevity-a-plan-to-harness-dna-sequencing.html?hpw&rref=health&action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fmicrobiome%2F30days%2Farticles%2F

Image:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/business/in-pursuit-of-longevity-a-plan-to-harness-dna-sequencing.html?hpw&rref=health&action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fmicrobiome%2F30days%2Farticles%2F

 

11,000 Year Old Dog Cancer!

Cancer normally lives and dies with the person whom it consumes, right? Well at least normally it does; however, this is not the case with a sexually transmitted cancer in dogs. Yes, dogs can get cancer in the form of an STD. This particular type of sexually transmitted cancer has continued living within the dog population for the past 11,000 years. Scientists have finally sequenced the genome of the world’s oldest continuously surviving caner. This cancer causes awful genital tumors and has been a reoccurring form since 11,000 years ago and has had over two million mutations. Compared to human forms of cancer which have a mere 1,000 to 5,000 mutations, this is insane. Why is this important? Sequencing this genome has proved that given the right conditions, cancer can live for at least 10,000 years even though it has countless mutations involved. The string of cancer can be linked all the way back to the original dog that was said to have it. Although they now have an idea that the original dog was an Alaskan Malamute, they do not know how it originally came to be. Having this information will help us understand how to handle the rare, but occasional cases of transmissible cancer in humans.

This article was very well constructed and had a lot of information that helped the article flow smoothly. There seemed to be a good balance of facts that were backed up with evidence and quotes. I would say that this article was very well written and formed to appropriately give the information.

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140123141742.htm

Image: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140123141742.htm