Clostridium difficile 1, MRSA 0

UK Health Protection Agency figures show that C. difficile infections rose by 5.5% in England during the first three quarters of 2006 to 42,625. MRSA infections fell by 5% to 3,391, but if trends continue the DoH target of halving cases by 2008 will be missed.
HPA officials said there was still much to be done to get a grip on the bugs.

Climate Change: Smoke and Mirrors

George Bush proposes to deal with climate change by means of smoke and mirrors. So what’s new? Only that it is no longer just a metaphor.
Every scheme that could give us a chance of preventing runaway climate change should be considered on its merits. But the proposals for building a global parasol don’t have very many. A group of nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, apparently bored of experimenting with only one kind of mass death, have proposed launching into the atmosphere a million tonnes of tiny aluminium balloons, filled with hydrogen, every year. One unfortunate side-effect would be to eliminate the ozone layer...

OK, now if you're too depressed to do any work, cheer yourself up by trying out the BBC Climate Challenge Game.

SGM Meeting, Manchester UK 26-29 March 2007

Looks like a great meeting, book now!

• Intracellular life of microbes
• Microbial transport systems
• Bacterial colonization, latency and host adaptation
• Blood borne virus infections
• Training of medical and dental students - making microbiology more relevant
• Soil microbiology: revisiting the past and developing the future
• Protein expression strategies
• Survival of Gram-positive pathogens during food processing
• Systems biology of regulatory networks
• Alphaproteobacteria: unifying a diverse class
• Molecular aspects of virus replication from entry to exit
• PhD: what next? (postgrads & first postdocs only)
• Colworth Prize Lecture: Professor Paul Williams (University of Nottingham)

Sir Alec Jeffreys: Great Briton

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester has been chosen as the overall Greatest Briton 2006. Congratulation Alec, and warmly deserved, but aren't you running out of space for all those trophies? ;-)

Great Microbiologists (Warning: Contains Lego)

Volcano Heat

Seems to me like this blog could do with a little light relief. Fortunately, the latest AskANinja is up. That should do it:

Improving how students learn

Although we're in the top 10 of the national student survey for the second year running, we're not complacent here at the University of Leicester. That's why we've just started a new project to improve how students learn.

You can learn more about studying with us here

Brewing Beer

more info

Help PBS pick a new science show

Courtesy of Scott McNulty @ TUAW:

PBS is in need of a new science show, and they have a conundrum on their hands. They need one new science show, and they have three pilots for science shows. What's a non-profit network to do? Why, make all three shows available for free on iTunes (and other places) and let the viewers choose which one will make it into full pledge series-dom. The three shows are (all iTunes Store links):

• Wired Science


• Science Investigators


• 22nd Century

Watch them, and let PBS know which one is the best.