Pandemic? Taliban? It Must Be Global Warming. For the last couple of decades global warming has been blamed for every natural disaster, but currently the dominant doom and gloom stories are the coronavirus pandemic and the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. And, yes, there are some people who claim there is a link between global warming […]
Category: Microbes
‘Shocking!’ They Are Not Evolving!
‘Shocking!’ They are not evolving! according to reports in Bigelow News and ScienceDaily 8 April 2021, Science Alert 9 April 2021, and The ISME Journal, 6 April 2021; doi: 10.1038/s41396-021-00965-3. Originally found deep in a South African mine, a bacterium named Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator was found to survive on a diet of chemicals produced from radioactivity […]
Hitchhiking Microbes Protect Plants and People
Hitchhiking microbes protect plants and people, according to articles in Science (AAAS) News 22 March 2021, and The ISME Journal, 15 March 2021. Doi 10.1038/s41396-021-00952-8. Soil dwelling bacteria known Streptomyces are known to colonise plant roots and protect plants from damage by other microbes by producing antibiotics. Many of these antibiotics are also used in […]
140 Thousand Viruses Found in Human Guts
140 thousand viruses found in human guts, according to reports in ScienceDaily 18 February 2021, Science Alert 28 February 2021, and Cell 19 February 2021 doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.029. Scientists at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have analysed 28,060 samples of gut microbiomes from around the world and found 142,809 bacteriophage viruses. Bacteriophages are a type of virus […]
Blood Parasites in Dino Bones
Blood parasites in dino bones found, according Smithsonian Magazine 18 November 2020 and Cretaceous Research 15 October 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104672. A group of scientists in Brazil were studying a deformity in a leg bone of a titanosaur, which they thought could be a bone tumour. When they examined it under a microscope they found microscopic […]
Containing the Coronavirus
Containing the coronavirus is proving to be difficult in spite of efforts by some governments and health authorities. This newly found virus, officially designated “2019-nCoV” is similar to two previously known deadly coronaviruses – SARS and MERS. Here is the testimony of one of our colleagues from a SARS outbreak. “All passengers from the affected […]
Re-Run Evolution Proves Flagellum Evolved
Re-run evolution proves flagellum evolved, claim scientists in an article in ABC Science 7 November 2019. Matt Baker, a biophysicist at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Nick Matzke a phylogeneticist at University of Auckland, New Zealand, have written an article entitled “Evolution or intelligent design? The story of the bacterial flagellar motor”. […]
Rabbit Evolution in Three Countries
Rabbit evolution in three countries, claim scientists in articles in Science (AAAS) News 14 February 2019, and Science 14 February 2019, doi: 10.1126/science.aau7285. European rabbits were introduced into Australia in the mid 1800s and over the following decades they multiplied and spread, eventually reaching plague proportions, and devastated crops and pasturelands. In 1950 the myxoma […]
World Needs Death and Decay
World needs death and decay claims an article is ScienceDaily 12 September 2018 about a study published in Ecological Monographs 11 September 2018, doi: 10.1002/ecm.1331. When animals and plants die there is a need for their remains to be broken down and decomposed so that nutrients and other substances are returned to the earth to […]
Rain Spreads Crop Diseases
Rain spreads crop diseases, according to an article in ScienceDaily 20 November 2017. Previous research has shown that raindrops can spread microscopic pathogens, i.e. disease causing bacteria, viruses and fungi. A team of researchers at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech have now studied how the spread actually happens, using laser […]