I had not heard the theory of bacteria contributing to precipitation

until I read Allies and Enemies: : How the World Depends on Bacteria, by Anne Maczulak. Now, this idea has gotten a boost by the concentrations of bacteria found in hailstones.

Bacteria-rich hailstones add to 'bioprecipitation' idea

One reason I'm glad I don't eat meat

Multi-Drug Resistant Staph in 1 in 4 Meat Samples

A team of researchers from Arizona bought meat and poultry in five cities across the United States, tested them for bacteria, and found this: 47 percent of the samples contained the very common pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, and 96 percent of those isolates were resistant to at least one antibiotic. Of more concern: 52 percent of those staph isolates were resistant to at least three antibiotics that are commonly used in both veterinary and human medicine.

I know, you can get E. coli from vegetables and fruits organically grown in manure as well, but meat just isn't appealing to me on so many levels. And although I can't prove any relevance, I will say that I haven't had a strep infection (which I got so often when I was younger that I couldn't get my tonsils out because they weren't free of the infection) since I stopped eating meat twenty years ago.

Beautiful--and alive

Ancient rock art's colours come from microbes

A particular type of ancient rock art in Western Australia maintains its vivid colours because it is alive, researchers have found.

While some rock art fades in hundreds of years, the "Bradshaw art" remains colourful after at least 40,000 years.

Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland in Australia has shown that the paintings have been colonised by colourful bacteria and fungi.

These "biofilms" may explain previous difficulties in dating such rock art.

Up briefly

I got up in the middle of the night to do my monthly libation to Hekate (I just felt too tired to even open a bottle of wine earlier, isn't that sad?)

I came across this tonight:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's exciting news, although those who fancily thought we might have an announcement of extraterrestrial life were no doubt disappointed. Be patient, it will happen, although it may be awhile before we find intelligent life. As my professor Dr Moshe Elitzur once told us, though, statistically speaking, the fact that at least one intelligent life evolved in the universe gives us a one in one chance of extraterrestrial life evolving in all the billions of star systems. It's just a matter of whether we can find it in some sort of proximity to ourselves. The universe is a big place. But a bacterium that uses arsenic rather than phosphorus is still nifty. I thought the clips of those at the news conference seemed a little melodramatic, but how often do astrobiologists get to have news conferences, really? I also like 'Another reason to come to California. We have aliens, you don't.' :)

Dr Elitzur taught a class at UK on extraterrestrial life which combined astronomy and biology. I loved it. He had such a good sense of humour. I remember one session whee we were discussing that all life on earth evolved with left-handed amino acids in our protein molecules. Right-handed amino acids exist naturally on the planet, but were never incorporated into life. In order to process other protein (i.e., digest food), we have to find other left-handed amino acid proteins. That's no trouble here on Earth. Someone asked what would happen if we found people on another planet with right-handed amino acids. Dr Elitzur's reply was that we could not eat them. I loved that class. I learned a lot, it brought me back to my science roots (I was going to be an oecologist before I went into history and sociology), and it was terrible fun. And even though it was taught sometime in the early 90s, I still remember good bits of it because of the way it was taught. :)

Okay, someone has been roasting what smells life beef in the apartment building. It's making even the pseudo-vegetarian hungry, but it's really too late at night to eat anything (I should say early in the morning, really, it's 5 am.) It was even making it through the CPAP filtration. I will not get back into my pizza, but wait until my normal time to eat.

Have a good day. I'm going back to bed for awhile.

I meant to blog about this earlier

Bacteria on Your Hands Could Become New Forensic Fingerprint

It has a huge margin of error, but the idea is certainly interesting, and it could be used as an inadmissible yet useful scientific process whose data could help finger (pun intended) criminals so that more reliable methods could be pursued, plus it yields details neither DNA nor fingerprints do.

Check out the article. It's certainly an interesting idea.

It's not you, it's your germs

Could germs be making you fat?

Gut Bacteria Cause Overeating in Mice

That's not saying diet and exercise have no bearing on weight, but scientists have observed that transplanting gut bacteria from obese mice to those of normal weight results in the thinner mice gaining weight. So it may be one of the factors in obesity.

On the topic of diet and obesity, here's another scientific finding from today's news:

DNA test 'could predict most effective diet'

A simple DNA test may predict whether someone is more likely to lose weight on a low fat or a low carbohydrate diet, say US researchers.

The results from the small preliminary study of 101 women showed those on the best diet for their genes lost two to three times more weight than the rest.

Hello--is this really a surprise?

Disinfectants 'train' superbugs to resist antibiotics

It makes sense that antibiotic use could make bacteria resistant to antibiotics they've been exposed to, and that all our antibacterial agents in soaps and disinfectant could do the same for those agents as well, right? But then there's this, something I intuitively thought was the case but didn't have the science to back it up--until now:

Scientists in Galway found that by adding increasing amounts of disinfectant to cultures of pseudomonas aeruginosa in the lab, the bacteria learnt to resist not only the disinfectant but also ciprofloxacin - a commonly-prescribed antibiotic - even without being exposed to it.

The researchers report the bacteria had adapted to pump out anti-microbial agents - be they a disinfectant or an antibiotic - from their cells.

The adapted bacteria also had a mutation in their DNA that allowed them to resist ciprofloxacin-type antibiotics specifically.

I must say, though, I find the mechanism fascinating.

Hey germaphobes, listen to this:

At the core of snowflakes, bacteria

In order to precipitate, water has to cling to something. A study sampling snowflakes from various parts of the world (including Antarctica), found that in about 85% of them, bacteria were at the nucleus. The most common is a type of bacterium known for causing problems for tomatoes and beans. Of the locations studied, France had the most bacteria at the core of snowflakes.