December 2011
19 posts
“Great advice for writers also, from producer Gavin Polone:
“Several...”
– Polone: How Shame Gives Me Hope That Good Movies Can Be Made — Vulture
November 2011
23 posts
Big rise recorded in UK farm antibiotic usage... →
Big rise recorded in farm antibiotic usage 24 November 2011 | By Alistair Driver THE quantity of veterinary antibiotics used in the UK increased by 11 per cent last year, new figures from the Veterinary Medicine Directorate (VMD) show. The latest increase followed a 4.6 per cent rise in 2009. A total of 446 tonnes of therapeutic antimicrobials active ingredients were used, primarily for ‘food...
Drug resistance in Indian TB patients - OTC drug... →
NEW DELHI: Drug resistance is spreading among tuberculosis (TB) patients in India. According to India’s revised national TB control programme (RNTCP), latest studies conducted in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh have found that around 12% to 17% of all TB re-treatment cases are drug resistant.
This has now made the RNTCP chief Dr Ashok Kumar moot the idea to the Union health ministry...
“As ID physicians, I think we need to stop pretending that we have effective...”
– Controversies in Hospital Infection Prevention: Deus ex machina and antibiotic resistance
Briefing in DC today on antibiotics in food...
Sens. Feinstein and Gillibrand, Rep. Slaughter (Congress’s only microbiologist), hosting:
Consumers Union
Food & Water Watch
Center for Science in the Public Interest
STOP Foodborne Illness
Union of Concerned Scientists
It’s at 11 a.m. and the location is HVC-201 (House Visitors’ Center).
HRSA continues to protect bad docs, threaten...
I posted last week about the decision by HRSA to take private the Public Use file of the National Practitioner Data Bank because one doctor — who had 16 malpractice suits and more than $3mm in payouts — incorrectly believed it had been used to identify him. In taking it private, HRSA also threatened both the reporter who wrote the story naming the doctor — whose name he found by good...
Watchsnif. dammit.
thedailywhat:
Heartbreaking Tearjerker of the Day: Tarra, a resident of the Elephant Sanctuary near Nashville, attracted media attention two years ago due to her unlikely friendship with a mixed-breed dog named Bella who had wandered onto the sanctuary grounds. Sadly, Bella was attacked and killed by coyotes two weeks ago.
Since then, Tarra has been inconsolable.
“There’s...
Patients in Italy, China co-infected w 2 strains... →
Two research groups today reported rare cases of pandemic 2009 H1N1 coinfections with seasonal influenza strains, including a cluster in Cambodia and two patients from Italy’s Veneto region.
Dual infections involving the 2009 H1N1 virus and seasonal strains have been reported before and are to be expected, a spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
...
Endangered eagles further endangered by... →
…Researchers from Spain’s National Museum of Natural Sciences, the Doñana Biological Station and GIR Diagnostics asked that question in a recent study of the Spanish imperial eagle, also known as the Iberian imperial eagle or Adalbert’s eagle (Aquila adalberti). One of the world’s rarest raptors, conservationists frequently supplement the bird’s natural prey with farm-raised rabbits.
...
Fed govt took public data private, threatened...
Emerging today: The backstory to the decision by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to take down a public data resource, the Public Use File of the National Practitioner Data Bank, which lists — without names — malpractice payouts and hospitals’ disciplinary proceedings against bad and sloppy doctors.
According to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, HRSA took down...
Health care workers who wear gloves neglect to... →
Healthcare workers who wear gloves while treating patients are much less likely to clean their hands before and after patient contact, according to a study published in the December issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA)
This failure of basic hand hygiene could be contributing to the spread of infection in...
update: Listeria in cantaloupes: 139 cases, 29... →
(Yes, still going. - m.)
Today’s Highlights, November 2, 2011
As of 9am EDT on November 1, 2011, a total of 139 persons infected with any of the four outbreak-associated strains of Listeria monocytogenes have been reported to CDC from 28 states.
Nevada and Utah have reported their first case each since the last CDC update.
Twenty-nine deaths have been reported.
In addition, one woman...
My former newspaper has a story abt militia...
“Dan Roberts said he knew people in Habersham County who had a substance that could kill people, the affidavit said, and the discussion next turned to ways to obtain castor beans. Castor beans are used to make ricin, a deadly toxin that can be fatal if inhaled or ingested.
“During a September meeting, also secretly recorded, Crump said he wanted to make 10 pounds of ricin and disperse...
““Tom … was serious about silliness and worked hard to get a moo...”
– ‘Prairie Home’ sound effects master Tom Keith dies | StarTribune.com
Registering for #Scio12? I'm leading 2 sessions:
Here are the draft descriptions. The full draft program is here:
5. The Path from Research to Book: Tools & Workflow Tips from Top Writers (discussion)
David Dobbs and Maryn McKenna
Once we used index cards. Now we use … well, what do we use? And how do we use it Writing any book, especially a science book, involves gathering and then somehow harnessing and drawing from an enormous...
Breaking: Chicago schools will serve only...
Big news: Later today (Nov. 1), the main food-service provider for all K-12 Chicago Public Schools will announce that henceforward it is going to buy and supply only chicken raised without use of antibiotics.
Details after 12p ET at Superbug.
