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Dying of dysentery is now more than just a video game meme in Oregon. In a disgusting turn of events straight out of the “Oregon Trail” game, the diarrhea-inducing malady dysentery is making a stomach-churning comeback in a densely populated region of the state. Cases of the hyper-contagious bacterial disease have surged in Multnomah County, with health officials reporting 40 cases of the wretched sickness in January, according to the Multnomah County Health Department, KOIN reported. The infection, also known as shigellosis, can spread through exposure with infected feces, contaminated food or water, or sexual contact – with person-to-person the...

Gigantic amoebas have been found in the Mariana Trench, the deepest region on Earth. During a July 2011 voyage to the Pacific Ocean chasm, researchers with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and National Geographic engineers deployed untethered landers, called dropcams, equipped with digital video and lights to explore the largely mysterious region of the deep sea. The team documented the deepest known existence of xenophyophores, single-celled animals exclusively found in deep-sea environments. Xenophyophores are noteworthy for their size, with individual cells often exceeding 4 inches (10 centimeters), their extreme abundance on the seafloor and their role as...

I, no doubt, stood there with a glazed look in my eyes when my friend informed me that donuts were not originally donut-shaped. I immediately raised doubts about his statement. “Of course they were donut-shaped” I finally replied. “Let’s say the ancient doughnut was shaped like the symbol for ‘pi’ (π). This shape would have defined what “donut-shaped” meant.” At the beginning, the baker might tell his neighbors he was making pi-shaped pastries called doughnuts. These future customers would have been confused because it would have sounded to them as if he had said “pie-shaped pastry”. Pies have always been...

After producing superlatives like the world’s biggest statue of a jackrabbit and the nation’s most unpopular modern-day president, Texas can now boast what may be its most bizarre and undoubtedly its slimiest topper yet: the world’s largest known colony of clonal amoebas. Scientists found the vast and sticky empire stretching 40 feet across, consisting of billions of genetically identical single-celled individuals, oozing along in the muck of a cow pasture outside Houston. “It was very unexpected,” said Owen M. Gilbert, a graduate student at Rice University and lead author of the report in the March issue of Molecular Ecology. “It...

When times are tough, many of us turn to family and develop closer ties. So too with amoebas. Some of these single-celled organisms tighten family bonds and cooperate when food is in short supply, new research shows how one amoeba species can distinguish genetically similar individuals, and how an incredibly simple life-form can display some sophisticated, social behaviors.

Amoebas may vomit E. coli on your greens 13:59 02 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Harmless protozoa that live on grocery store greens can shelter deadly food pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella. A laboratory study has found that food pathogens survive being eaten by protozoa living on spinach and lettuce. The temporary asylum might help bacteria stick onto leafy greens or resist efforts to kill them before packaging. Whether the shelter the protozoa provide contributes to pathogen outbreaks, however, remains to be seen. A team led by microbiologist Sharon Berk, of Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, fed...