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The Inoculum Effect of Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing

 

Water Mites: Sticky Dancers with Crystal Poop

 

The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years

 

Vandana Shiva and the Seeds of the Sri Lankan Farming Disaster

For decades now, we have been told by NGOs such as Greenpeace, well-meaning but uninformed celebrities like Mark Ruffalo and the threat to global food security herself, Vandana Shiva, that organic farming is more sustainable and produces comparable yields to conventional farming methods. We all, including myself, want this to be true but deep down we all know when we see the premium price tag on organic produce that it’s not. The sad reality is that the organic movement is simply marketing disguised as a grassroots movement relying on, and amplifying, the ignorance of its own consumers. It survives by distorting science and promoting a false narrative that organic food is somehow safer or is more nutritional than conventional foods. That is not to say there is no shortage of problems associated with chemical-intensive large-scale agriculture, but the solution to these problems is not to take us back to the dark ages and for us to ignore all the advancements in technology that have take...

Land deals advance Solano County’s biomanufacturing hub plans: North Bay Business Journal

Developers have closed three large land deals, and another has obtained city of Vacaville approval for an office and commercial biomanufacturing plant, just 21 months after the city and Solano Community College jointly announced formation of the California Biomanufacturing Center Inc., a nonprofit corporation tasked with promoting expansion of biomanufacturing in Vacaville. In the agreement forming the center, the city designated two locations with a combined area of about 300 acres for future biomanufacturing development: a large tract of vacant land south of Genentech’s campus in the Vaca Valley Business Park, and a portion of the planned Lower Lagoon Valley mixed use development southeast of I-80. At the October 27, 2020, press conference announcing the biomanufacturing center’s launch, Vacaville Mayor Ron Rowlett described its primary objectives. “We’ve done our research, and our goal is simple: Make Vacaville and the Bay Area the epicenter for biomanufacturing in the United States...

Lab Report 35: From DNA to protein (Part 2)

 

Monkeypox: WHO declares highest alert over outbreak

The monkeypox outbreak has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization. The classification is the highest alert that the WHO can issue and follows a worldwide upsurge in cases. It came at the end of the second meeting of the WHO's emergency committee on the virus. More than 16,000 cases have now been reported from 75 countries, said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. There had been five deaths so far as a result of the outbreak, he added. There are only two other such health emergencies at present - the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing effort to eradicate polio. Dr Tedros said the emergency committee had been unable to reach a consensus on whether the monkeypox outbreak should be classified as a global health emergency. However, he said the outbreak had spread around the world rapidly and he had decided that it was indeed of international concern. Too little was understood about the new modes of transmission which had allowed it ...