Tag Archives: Bacteria

World Economic Forum: Top Stories- Aug 12, 2023

World Economic Forum (August 12, 2023) – This week’s top stories of the week include:

0:15 Scientists discover self healing metals – They have the ability to weld tiny cracks back together again without human intervention. Scientists were studying how microscopic cracks spread through platinum using a machine that repeatedly pulled on the ends of the metal. But after 40 minutes, the damage began to heal itself. The scientists said it was ‘absolutely stunning’ to watch first-hand. The finding revises some of our basic theories about metals.

1:42 Who owns a song written by AI – Music made with artificial intelligence has made headlines this year. In April, an AI-generated track cloned the voices of Drake and The Weeknd. Heart on My Sleeve racked up 20 million streams on Spotify, Tiktok and Twitter before copyright claims by Universal Music Group saw it pulled from platforms. The pop star Grimes has taken a different route, offering to split royalties with anyone who uses her voice on an AI track. The limits of creative copyright were once clear but AI has introduced uncertainty.

4:50 These special microbes kill harmful bacteria – The food industry struggles with persistent pathogens, such as Salmonella which causes fever, diarrhoea and stomach pain. In 2021, 96,000 cases of salmonellosis were reported in the EU. The illness costs up to €3 billion a year in health bills and lost productivity. These phage food safety solutions have been created by Phageguard. Phages are the most abundant organisms in nature and a natural solution to bacteria which they infect and dissipate. As well as being natural and safe, phages are specific to each target pathogen and unlike antibiotics, they don’t lead to side-effects or antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

6:24 Prescribing fruit and veg could save millions of lives – In the US, fruit and veg prescriptions would prevent almost 300,000 heart attacks and strokes and give people an extra 260,000 years of good health if they were offered to people with diabetes aged 40-79.

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The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.

Research: The Scientist Magazine – Summer 2023

The Scientist Magazine (June 1, 2023) – The Summer Issue features bacteria cooperating to benefit the collective, but cheaters can rig the system and biofilms are home to millions of microbes, but disrupting their interactions could produce more effective antibiotics.

Cooperation and Cheating

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa

Bacteria cooperate to benefit the collective, but cheaters can rig the system. How is the balance maintained?


People often recognize social behaviors in complex organisms such as insects, nonhuman primates, and humans. But Megan Frederickson, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, is interested in a different, microscopic social community: bacteria. “Cooperation is everywhere,” she said. “Cells cooperate in multicellular organisms; individuals cooperate in societies; and different species cooperate… Why would it not be the case that microbes cooperate with each other?” 

New Insight into Brain Inflammation Inspires New Hope for Epilepsy Treatment 

Clinicians and researchers teamed up to investigate how inappropriate proinflammatory mechanisms contribute to the pathogenesis of drug-refractory epilepsy.

3D image of a neuron cell network with a red glow representing inflammation.

Doctors treat epilepsy with anticonvulsants to control seizures, but some patients do not respond to these first-line therapies. For patients with drug-refractory epilepsy (DRE) whose seizures persist after treatment with two or more anticonvulsants, clinicians must surgically remove part of the brain tissue to cure the disease.

Analysis: Multiresistant Bacteria That Outsmart Antibiotics (Video)

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest medical challenges of our time. Among the causes are industrial livestock farming, poor hygiene in hospitals, and the misuse of antibiotics. This documentary looks at approaches to fighting multiresistant strains of bacteria.

Each year 33,000 people in Europe die after becoming infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Hygiene specialist Dr. Ron Hendrix has been working for years to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease in hospitals. Dr. Hendrix says that he and other experts in the Netherlands recognized early on that they’d have to fight the spread of bacteria just as actively as they would the actual infection.

Hendrix has convinced a number of German hospitals to re-open their diagnostic laboratories, as well. In the early 2000s, many of these labs had been shut down as a cost-cutting measure. And farmers in Denmark voluntarily chose to sharply reduce their use of antibiotics, after evidence showed that intensive livestock farming caused multiresistant bacteria to multiply.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Patrick Soentjens was able to convince Belgium’s health ministry to allow the use of “phages” to treat stubborn antimicrobial resistant pathogens. Phages are special viruses that kill bacteria. Dr. Soentjens is certain that this well-known, but largely forgotten option could save many lives. Belgium has become the first western European country where phages have been officially recognized as a legitimate medical treatment.

Science Podcast: New 2021 Research, Wildland Fire Smoke, Bacteria & Fungi

We kick off our first episode of 2021 by looking at future trends in policy and research with host Meagan Cantwell and several Science news writers. Ann Gibbons talks about upcoming studies that elucidate social ties among ancient humans, Jeffrey Mervis discusses relations between the United States and China, and Paul Voosen gives a rundown of two Mars rover landings.

In research news, Meagan Cantwell talks with Leda Kobziar, an associate professor of wildland fire science at the University of Idaho, Moscow, about the living component of wildfire smoke—microbes. The bacteria and fungi that hitch a ride on smoke can impact both human health and ecosystems—but Kobziar says much more research is needed. 

Top New Science Podcasts: Higher Covid-19 Severity In Men, Bacteria Tracking

science-magazine-podcastsFirst up this week, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source. Read a related commentary piece.