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The teeming trillions of bacteria in the digestive tracts of mice have been shown to affect the animals' brain development and behaviour.Mice bred in sterile environments without these "gut flora" were seen to be more adventurous and less anxious than mice with normal gut flora. The research adds weight to the idea that gut bacteria are a critical part of the overall development of mammals.

Federal study confirms microbes have eaten most of the Gulf Oil Spill A study by researchers from Texas A&M and University of California in Santa Barbara have found that all of the methane gas released from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been consumed by tiny microbes. Methane gas amounts 100,000 times higher than normal at the time of their release have completely disappeared after only 120 days. Some scientists had raised concerns that dissolved methane and other oil residue would continue to plague the Gulf for years or even decades. This is turning out not...

f First Lady Michelle Obama has her way, every public school cafeteria across this great nation will have a salad bar full of lettuce, carrots, and communism. The First Lady's Let's Move Salad Bars To Schools program aims to put 6,000 kid-sized salad bars in schools. Each salad bar costs $2,500, and the whole program costs $15 million. So on top of promoting a vegetable-y socialist agenda, they're also expensive! (Schools are being encouraged to raise part of the money themselves.) Big government run amock! The goal of course is to hoodwink children into eating their vegetables. >>> The goal...

Every week hundreds of Utahns carry their groceries home in reusable grocery bags. They do it to help the health of the environment, but it may be at the risk of their own health. KSL 5 News pulled out the gloves, the swabs and the culture dishes for a Staying Safe investigation that reveals - you may be carrying more in your bag than you bought. Studies done in other states found some reusable bags have contained samples of e.coli and salmonella. But our tests were negative: no e.coli, no salmonella. The coliforms were another story. Of the 89 bags...

Incredible microbe found in California lakeNasa scientists are set to announce that bacteria have been discovered that can survive in arsenic, an element previously thought too toxic to support life, it can be revealed. In a press conference scheduled for tomorrow evening, researchers will unveil the discovery of the incredible microbe - which substitutes arsenic for phosphorus to sustain its growth - in a lake in California. The remarkable discovery raises the prospect that life could exist on other planets which do not have phosphorus in the atmosphere, which had previously been thought vital for life to begin. But it...

For years, researchers have wondered about a connection between children getting strep throat and later showing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a frequently debilitating condition affecting millions of Americans in which those afflicted think repetitive thoughts they don’t want to or perform compulsive, ritualistic behaviors they wish they didn’t have to— ..." The thinking has been that strep throat bacteria trigger the production of antibodies that end up not only targeting strep, but “mistakenly” acting on an enzyme in the brain, which is involved in making brain chemical messengers. In so doing, the antibodies to the strep...

A few scientists noticed in the late 1960s that the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri appeared to coordinate among themselves the production of chemicals that produced bioluminescence, waiting until a certain number of them were in the neighborhood before firing up their light-making machinery. This behavior was eventually dubbed “quorum sensing.” It was one of the first in what has turned out to be a long list of ways in which bacteria talk to each other and to other organisms.

Scientists have discovered that they can attach tiny studs of silver onto the surface of otherwise harmless bacteria, giving them the ability to destroy viruses. They have tested the silver-impregnated bacteria against norovirus, which causes winter vomiting outbreaks, and found that they leaves the virus unable to cause infections. The researchers now believe the same technique could help to combat other viruses, including influenza and those responsible for causing the common cold. Professor Willy Verstraete, a microbiologist from the University of Ghent, Belgium, who unveiled the findings at a meeting of the Society for Applied Microbiology in London last week,...

Marchetta could not find anyone who regularly cleaned their reusable bags. Marchetta brought the lab results to Dr. Michelle Barron, the infectious disease expert at the University of Colorado Hospital. "Wow. Wow. That is pretty impressive," said Barron. Barron examines lab results for a living. "Oh my goodness! This is definitely the highest count," Barron commented while looking at the bacteria count numbers. She admitted she was shocked at what was found at the bottom of the bags. "We're talking in the million range of bacteria," she said. Marchetta used swabs provided by a local lab to test several grocery...

Seaswarm, an autonomous, solar-powered skimmer, may be the answer to less expensive and more efficient methods for cleaning up future oil spills. The robot prototype promises to absorb 20 times its weight in oil. Created by researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, Seaswarm employs a conveyor belt of absorbent, nanowire mesh. The specially deigned mesh can suck up oil on the water’s surface and then process and dispose of the oil it’s collected. The Seaswarm can continue to absorb more of the spill while the robot autonomously navigates and cleans the ocean for weeks on end. Researchers claim that 5,000...

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico. And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ... the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

Bacteria are well-known to be the cause of some of the most repugnant smells on earth, but now scientists have revealed this lowest of life forms actually has a sense of smell of its own. A team of marine microbiologists at Newcastle University have discovered for the first time that bacteria have a molecular "nose" that is able to detect airborne, smell-producing chemicals such as ammonia. Published today in Biotechnology Journal, their study shows how bacteria are capable of 'olfaction' – sensing volatile chemicals in the air such as ammonia produced by rival bacteria present in the environment. Led by...

A new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics has entered UK hospitals, experts warn. They say bacteria which make an enzyme called NDM-1 travelled back with NHS patients who had gone abroad to countries like India and Pakistan for treatments such as cosmetic surgery. Although there have only been about 50 cases identified in the UK so far, scientists fear it will go global. Tight surveillance and new drugs are needed says Lancet Infectious Diseases. NDM-1 can exist inside different bacteria, like E.coli, and it makes them resistant to one of the most powerful groups of...

BALTIMORE — Waking from a fog of anesthesia, Sandy Wilson found she was a patient in one of the hospitals where she worked as a nurse. She remembered having a baby, and being told she had gotten an infection. But nothing could prepare her for what lurked beneath the sheets. Flesh-eating bacteria were eating her alive. "When I looked down at my belly, basically all the skin was gone and I could see my internal organs," she said. "I remember seeing my intestines. I thought, 'There's no way I can live like this ... This is a death sentence.'" ...

It’s taken millions of dollars to cap it, and it could take billions more to clean it up. BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is perhaps the environmental catastrophe of the century. But Tel Aviv University has a solution that may help remedy the remaining oil residue through a natural, biological process. Prof. Eugene Rosenberg and Prof. Eliora Ron of Tel Aviv University’s (TAU) Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology are using naturally occurring oil-munching bacteria, grown at the TAU lab, to clean the hard-to-reach oil pockets that occur when oil mixes with sand and organic matter on...

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NASA is funding a group of scientists to investigate the strange structures called "microbialites" on the bottom of Pavilion Lake, British Columbia. Read the article at the link. Weirdly, while they think that they are bio-geological formations like stromatolites, they might not be. Here's are a couple pictures of them. Here's what the lake looks like; somewhat akin to a fjord. Link to the project Web site: Pavilion Lake Research Project

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers have developed the first bacteria cell controlled by a synthetic genome, in a breakthrough which may pose philosophical and scientific questions about the bid to recreate life. "This is the first synthetic cell that's been made," said lead researcher Craig Venter, as the discovery was unveiled. "We call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer." The team said it now hopes to use the method it has developed "to probe the basic machinery of...

Water main break means 38 communities must boil their water to drink.

A mat the size of Uruguay composed of giant bacteria has been discovered in the mid-depths of the ocean off the coasts of Chile and Peru, report scientists who are working on a series of studies of the ocean's smallest life forms. These enormous spaghetti-like mats of megabacteria (Thioploca spp.) may play a key role the region's extremely rich fisheries, says marine biologist Víctor Ariel Gallardo, vice-chair of the Census of Marine Life Scientific Steering Committee, which released the preliminary results of its survey in early April. Some 2,000 scientists from more than 80 nations are participating in the Census,...