h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Absolutely right, Hussassan. I learnt that in Biology as well!

greetings and welcome to the campaign, annie! your shiny badge awaits at the main page (A1001854), and your complimentary cup of yoghurt is ready. all that's left of the ceremony is the branding/knighting -

as i've told hussassan, we now have a microbe news and announcements section ( A1928694). if you come across any microbe-related articles, just drop a line at the page, and i'll add it to the collection!

Hey Farlander!
I havent received my complementary (and Im sure, delicious) cup of yogurt, nor have I been branded with the innoculation loop!
Feeling left out!

Hi all.
Just thought I'd share what I learned in bio today...We've been discussing blood types (ABO as an example of codominance and rhesus factor as an example of antigen/antibody interaction) and were figuring out the implications if an Rh negative mother was carrying an Rh positive fetus. Five minutes later, we've developed our pickup line-"Hey, you're cute. What's your blood type?"
Fortunately modern medicine means this isn't really a concern.

Yay for medicine, and yay for microbes.

I would have said that incompatible blood groups still was a concern in some cases.

On the microbe side though, I'm not sure whether the nylon-eating bacteria is good, bad or merely "ugly".

and yay for living in a place where almost everybody is rh negative! (have you read bram stoker's 'dracula' btw? i nearly died when they found mina almost drained of blood, and the doctor said, quick hold out your arm! - not once, but *twice*)

and speaking of microbes being good... have you ever considered having a microbe for a pet? read this:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/4_9.html#subindex



oh, and sef - i'm not sure i particularly care for nylon-eating microbes either. not that i think i have anything *nylon* in my closet....

oh dear... i must have missed your posting, lab rat.... oh yes, here it is. welcome to the campaign! sorry, i didn't realise that you'd wanted to join, but to make up for it - here's your complimentary yoghurt ... and a slab of cheese by way of apology . now hang on while i find the gas tank - it's here somewhere, i know it.



there you go! your shiny new badge awaits you at A1001854. you might want to check the news and announcements section every now and then for microbe-related news (or post to the conversations if you find any little nuggets of your own)

cheers mate

I'm allergic to nylon. So there are some grounds for considering nylon-eating bacteria as pets. The trouble is that if they did protect me from having contact with anything nylon that might be destroy the structural integrity of whatever it was! Nylon coated in cotton would be safe for me but presumably not safe from the bacteria. Also shops would have to put up signs as they do for no dogs (except guide dogs).

Y'know, we all technically have quadrillions of bacteria as pets in our mouths - there are more bacteria in the human mouth than the total number of humans that have ever lived. And don't even get me started on the lower intestine...

It's still a concern. But the main problem I refer to here is with Rh groups (positive/negative) If an Rh negative mother is carrying an Rh positive child (from Rh positive father) agglutination can occur when the baby's blood enters the mother's bloodstream. Her immune system may attack the fetus, as well. But that can be treated by giving the mother RhoGam, which will cover the Rh antigens, in the event that any Rh positive blood from the baby gets into the mother's blood. This effectively makes the antigens invisible, provoking no immune response in the mom.

I know you meant the Rhesus factor. What you've missed though is that the solution isn't as perfect as you make out.

I think it might be accurate to say that modern medicine means that its less of an obvious issue than it once was. For people who have access to medical care (and who utilize that access), it's something that is usually thought of as a minor nuisance. But, not everyone receives the prophylactic treatment....

Some interesting references for those who might be interested:

Am J Public Health. 1998 Feb;88(2):209-15.
The decline in Rh hemolytic disease: should Rh prophylaxis get all the credit?
Joseph KS, Kramer MS.

Br J Obstet Gynaecol. 1997 Jan;104(1):37-41.
Preventing Rhesus D haemolytic disease of the newborn by giving anti-D immunoglobulin: are the guidelines being adequately followed?
Howard HL, Martlew VJ, McFadyen IR, Clarke CA.

J R Coll Physicians Lond. 1994 Jul-Aug;28(4):310-1.
Decline in deaths from rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn.
Clarke C, Hussey RM.

Br J Obstet Gynaecol. 1994 Apr;101(4):297-300.
Causes and clinical consequences of Rhesus (D) haemolytic disease of the newborn: a study of a Scottish population, 1985-1990.
Hughes RG, Craig JI, Murphy WG, Greer IA.

(Note: These references all deal with western populations only -- there is relatively little published research in recent years looking at other parts of the world.)

and just to help those who don't have access to those journals in their local library - you'll probably find them here:

http://www.sciencekomm.at

i usually go there for the biology articles, but i've done a great deal of article-searching for my boss there, and it's an *excellent* resource for medical journals.

Thanks for the Farlander, it went down very well with the yoghurt!

Im growing some E. coli and Staph for my course right now. They are nice and snug and warm in their broth, but the dragon of a lab technician wont let me use a water bath to melt my TSA so I can pour my plates!
Dont ya just hate that!

Great link above!

oh also, how do I get the badge onto my page? Me good at science, not website-y stuff.

You need to switch to editing your page in GuideML mode first (the radio options and button to do this are below the text box when you edit the page). Then you can add:



You may want to use EMBED to have the text go round it. You may want to use LINK to make the picture link to the campaign page or thread. You will have to change your smiley to <SMILEY TYPE="smiley" /> and use for paragraphs or for line breaks to keep your current spacing.

You have a very valid point there.
I'll have to hunt down some of these articles when I have some free time (free time...what's that?) Just keep in mind that I'm coming from the perspective of a first year AP Bio student. So I think it's a fair bet that I know less about any of this than most of you. Any corrections are welcomed! It's just that in my class we tend to work off the assumption that people have access to the necessary medical care. Frankly, I think looking at some of this from a real-world perspective would be a little too much for some of the lame-brains in my class. Very good at memorizing stuff, but less so about understanding the concepts. Anything more complicated than that sends them into shock.

Just hope it isn't toxic shock from yet more microbes!

lab rat - e. coli is my favourite bacteria! (ste and i even wrote a little article about it sometime back. it's around here somewhere) er... don't you pour your plates after autoclaving the media? (well, not straightaway - that would melt the plates! i mean, after you cool it down to about 50) i usually do that, and then leave them to cool overnight (and to check that they're not contaminated) before using them.

speaking of media - there was once this guy who got permission to use my lab for culture purposes. he autoclaved all his media and left them standing on our bench - and a few days later they started smelling REAL BAD, and stank up the place. (it was LB broth. and yes, i know what LB is supposed to smell like - it's really quite nice smelling, like BHI - and it didn't smell anything like that! the broth was also cloudy, which meant that things had started growing in it) we could only conclude that he had the worst hands in the business - and subsequently labelled him 'the terrorist'. (well, he *was* a pest as well)

(he managed to get our biohazard bin to reek as well, by the way. we had an awful time getting rid of the smell in the lab after he left)

I have fond memories of trying to make my bacteria grow in certain patterns. I once spelled out my name, one letter per plate. Clearly, I had too much time on my hands in school....

well, we never did that, but my best friend and i spent so much time preparing and autoclaving bhi broth and it smelt sooooo good (it smells just like marmite, just in case you haven't noticed) that we decided that one day we'd have to try some of it to see how it tasted.

(well, we haven't yet, but there's always time...)

speaking of plates: we formed the society for the appreciation of e. coli in our second year, and hogged one whole department notice board for ourselves. our classmate gavin did really cool decorations for it - the name of our club done in coloured styrofoam, plastic petri dishes filled with fake (coloured paper) cultures etc. we asked him where in space he'd gotten the dishes.

(wait for it)

he confessed that he'd scraped out the plates we'd used in anaerobic microbiology to grow clostridia....