#microbial cleaning

[microbzcouk]

Cleaner Homes, Healthier Planet with Microbial Cleaning Options by Microbz

Redefine cleanliness with Microbz’s microbial cleaning products. Safe for allergies and pets, our eco-friendly solutions promise a spotless home and a greener Earth. Clean your home effectively and safely with Microbz's eco-friendly cleaning products powered by good microbes.

[cipriannicolaepopa]

The Transformative Power of Sourdough: Revolutionizing the Bread Industry and Consumer Perceptions

People with celiac disease or various gluten intolerances may soon have a broader range of food options, thanks to advancements in research and the expanding industrial use of a traditional bread-making process: sourdough. Sourdough is a dough of varying consistency, depending on the initial ratio of flour to water, which undergoes spontaneous fermentation (due to naturally occurring…

[corvidsfullmoons]

[fixomnia-scribble]

Scientists are very serious.

This is a post about science. And soup.

Dr. Elinne Becket, a microbiologist from Cal State University, is in the middle of one of those Fridge Experiments that happens to us all - except in this case, she is uniquely placed to unravel the science down to the microbial level.

While cleaning out her fridge, Dr. Becket found that a tub of family-recipe beef vegetable soup had turned bright blue. “Ok I'm outing myself here,” she tweeted, “but there was forgotten beef soup in our fridge we just cleaned it out and it was BLUE?!?!? Wtf contam would make it blue??? Like BRIGHT blue!!  Even w/ all my years in micro I'm not handling this well.“

Read on for a breathless and ongoing saga of Soup and Science, and the wonderful international community that is Academic Twitter.

Academic Twitter quickly reminded her of her Responsibilities to Scientific Inquiry. (Cue the chanting from around the world of “CLONE THE SOUP! CLONE THE SOUP!”)

“I can’t believe y’all talked me into going back into the trash.” she tweeted in response, over a photo of a puddle of beautiful Mediterranean-sea blue soup in the trash bin, with bits of veg and noodles arising from the depths.

Scientists being scientists, Dr. Becket agreed to take a sample and send it to colleagues for cloning and microbial analysis.This involved getting arms-deep into the trash bin of Old Soup. “I’m never forviging @ATinyGreenCell (genomic biologist Sebastian Cocioba) for this.” Dr. Becket tweeted, with a photo of a properly dipped and snipped and VERY blue q-tip in a small clear plastic tub.

Diving into decomposing soup was not the only hazard. She writes: “My mom (who made the soup for my birthday) came across this thread and now 1) I have to answer for letting her soup spoil and 2) she's worried @ATinyGreenCell will figure out her secret recipe.“

Dr. Becket and Sebastian were able to culture the Blue Goo!

Becket posted a photo of three petri plates of streaked beef bouillon agar at 72 hours incubation, at 37C, room temp and 4C. She writes: “Left the plates where they were for another 2 days, except the 37°C one was brought to RT, which then grew white stuff over the yellow stuff and stinks to high heaven. RT looked the same. 4°C had impressive growth. Restreaked them all onto TECH agar, awaiting results!”

Sebastian, from his lab, tweeted a photo of three more covered petri dishes, with early results: “Great progress on isolating the glowy microbe from our #BlueSoup! It's so fluorescent the streak is GREEN. Still needs another restreak as it seems there is a straggler but should clear up in the next plate. Exciting!”

Then yesterday, Sebastian tweeted out an updated photo of his plates under daylight and blacklight. “Whatever grew on the #BlueSoup colony plates overnight glows under UV, but only on King's Agar B! That particular media is used to tease out fluorescein expression in pseudomonads. What are the chances that the same cell line expresses fluorescent AND blue pigments?“

“Looking closer, there definitely is a handful of different microbes showing distinct phenotypes. Could be that the blue producer and the fluorescent microbes are totally different microbes!”

At which point, Professor Cynthia Whitchurch of Norwich, England, responded: “Consistent with P. fluorescens being at least part of the #BlueSoup community. The fluorescence is due to production of the siderophore pyoverdine which is up-regulated when iron availability is limited. P. aeruginosa produced this too but my guess is you have blue Pf.”

And Australian agricultural researcher @WAJWebster helpfully tweeted a petri dish of ALL KINDS of colourful bacterial colonies from white to yellow to orange to stark black, with a cheerful: “You need bact-o--colours? I got you, fam.”

The best part is that as of today, March 9, 2023, THE BLUE SOUP MYSTERY CONTINUES. WE ARE WATCHING SCIENCE HAPPENING!

A paper is being written. And Dr. Becket’s mum is getting an author credit as the proprietary owner of the #BlueSoup recipe.

Dr. Becket’s Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/bielleogy

Sebastian Cocioba’s Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/ATinyGreenCell

Fun IFLS story is here: https://www.iflscience.com/microbiologist-investigates-after-her-beef-soup-turned-blue-in-the-freezer-67894?fbclid=IwAR0H27KqVZhzzrosnjzzKkxuKASZ-0L0Lt6hGwCRDJK8xvFbbSlyS4JvwlM

[timesofpharma]

Clean Room Validation in Pharmaceutical Industry how to do

Clean Room Validation how it’s done different requirements of clean Room Validation from particle Count to Microbial Count Limits methods to do it? Validation is an important activity in Pharmaceutical Industry, it impart trust on the process and inturn the product manufactured. For doing validation of clean room, unless all the installed equipment are validated, the Clean Room validation…

[mokshalifestyleinternational]

USDA-CERTIFIED LEMON ESSENTIAL OIL

Lemon Essential Oil is a pleasant, delicious, and zesty aroma that refreshes the mind and produces a relaxing atmosphere. As a result, it is often used in aromatherapy to alleviate anxiety and depression. It possesses the most potent anti-microbial effect of any essential oil and is sometimes referred to as "Liquid Sunshine." It is also used in diffusers to relieve nausea and morning sickness. It is well-known for its energizing, cleaning, and purifying effects. It increases energy, metabolism, and mood. It is widely used in the skincare business to cure acne and prevent blemishes. It is also used to cure dandruff and clean the scalp; for these purposes, it is added to hair care products.

[l-e-g-i-o-n-losh]

Babygirls i am TRULY yucky disgusting xp

[andypantsx3]

SOMETHING IN THE WATER | 5 | SHOUTO x READER

SUMMARY: As a future marine biologist, you’ve scored big on your final internship: a summer in the tropics, researching the waters off the coast of a lush, sunny island. But what you thought would be all beach days and piña coladas turns out to be the revelation of a lifetime when you haul in a handsome merprince, and discover not everything in these waters is quite as it seems. TAGS/WARNINGS: mermaid au, interspecies relationships, mating rituals/courting behavior, (sort of) case fic, aged up characters, eventual smut, fem pronouns/afab reader LENGTH: 3.5k of est. 21k, 5th of 8 chapters

It was pollution. No doubt about it.

Under the lens of one of Kamui’s microscopes, the evidence was incontrovertible. The piece of white coral Shouto had brought you sported distinct traces of industrial processing chemicals that had almost certainly contributed to its bleaching, the concentration high enough that it had also probably choked the life out of the nearby environment.

It was high enough, in fact, that you were absolutely floored your team hadn’t come across even a hint of anything similar before. Based on the levels, you should have been finding at least smaller traces close to the area it came from, but nothing you’d found so far had even hinted at anything like this.

Which begged the question, just where in the hell had Shouto gotten it from?

When you legged it back down to the beach, however, both the merman and your sandwich were missing. The only evidence of his presence were the slices of mozzarella that had clearly been picked out of the sandwich, laid out cleanly on the wrapper you’d left behind.

You’d sighed and cleaned your trash up, then slogged back to your room for a shower and a few hours of sleep, stowing the coral away safely to show to your team in the morning.

When you awoke, however, you realized you would have no way of explaining to them where you’d obtained it, and no way to point them any closer to the source of the issue. You resolved to find Shouto as soon as possible to figure out what was going on, hopefully before the scheduled tour of Sunfish.

You rocketed through your morning tasks, and hurriedly volunteered to take over trap checking duty, disappearing out the door before Yu could so much as get out a reply.

You boated north to the reef where you’d first met Shouto, and jumped into the water before you’d even gotten your snorkeling gear on properly, certain the merman would somehow find you. You’d nearly finished checking the trap, kicking off the seafloor to rise back to the surface when a hand seized your elbow, guiding you back up.

Shouto’s handsome face was staring back at you when you yanked off your goggles, his distinctive hair slicked back with ocean water, the scar around his eye a deep pink in the sunlight. Sunlight glittered off the droplets on his skin, making him look even more ethereal than he usually did, and your breath momentarily seized in your chest.

“Hi Shouto,” you said, your face going hot when it came out weirdly breathy. Embarrassing.

A tiny little smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, and his fingers flexed on your elbow. “Hello,” he said in his deep, even tone.

Even that simple greeting somehow made you flush. You quickly marshaled yourself, trying to remember you had come here with an agenda, not to float here stupidly in the water, staring at him.

“Shouto—that coral you gave me yesterday? One of them has the signs of the pollution I was looking for!”

Shouto blinked, a droplet of water sliding down the side of his straight, handsome nose. Your eyes seemed weirdly glued to it as it reached the edge of his mouth.

“Then you liked it? It had…microbes?” he asked.

You nodded distractedly. “Sort of. Signs of microbial unhealth and chemically-induced bleaching. And I did like it. I think you might have actually solved the whole case for me!”

Shouto’s mouth pulled into a fuller, happier smile, just enough to bare the tops of those sharp teeth. You blinked, momentarily stunned, looking back up into his eyes to find him watching you intently.

“You liked it. My gift,” he said, something strangely smug in his tone. A little thrill raced through you, a frission of pleasure, at having put that expression on his face, that tone in his voice. Your ears went hot, and you pointedly did not think about why his pleasure made you so pleased as well.

“Yeah, I loved it,” you nodded, startled when Shouto’s fingers slid from your elbow to your wrist, lifting it up to his face.

But then in the next instant his expression shifted, his brows furrowing and the edges of his smile dipping. Instantly, you mourned the loss of it.

“But…you are not wearing it,” he said. “Either of them.”

Your eyelashes fluttered themselves in another disconcerted blink. Had…that been a requirement? Had he said that to you, yesterday?

You didn’t think you’d had much conversation between him handing over the bits of coral and you rushing off to the lab with them, but maybe that had been his expectation of what you would do with them. Maybe that was a common merperson thing, and you were too ignorant to think of it.

In fact, you hadn’t even taken the time to ask him why he’d given the coral bits to you, too focused on getting them under Kamui’s microscope like a huge disrespectful idiot.

You flushed, suddenly feeling incredibly rude. Was this a merperson custom you had just flagrantly ignored?

“Am I—? Is that something your people, um, do?” you asked. “Wear coral?”

Shouto nodded, those mismatched eyes still glued to your bare wrist. His fingers carefully shifted to encircle it, like he was replacing the expected bits of coral with his own hold on you. Your face burned and you paddled a little bit harder in the water, expelling nervous energy.

“I am so sorry, I didn’t know. Of course I will wear them, I just need to find some kind of string—” A sudden thought seized you. “Except—-well, Shouto, I need that white coral to prove pollution. I need to show it to my team, and be able to explain where I got it from. They might need to send it off as evidence.”

Shouto’s fingers tightened on you, though you noted he was still mindful of his claws. A hissing noise exploded out of him, and that scraping feeling burned at the back of your throat again, the bioelectric signal of his distaste clear enough.

“It is yours, not theirs,” he hissed, his handsome face suddenly all twisted up.

You could quite literally feel how distressed he was, and your heart throbbed with the realization that you were the cause.

You immediately backtracked, horrified. You shifted in the merman’s grip, twisting your hand to grab his wrist too, and put your other hand to his shoulder, holding him firmly.

“I’m sorry—Shouto, yes of course it’s mine. Of course I won’t give it to them,” you said, trying to angle your face to look into his eyes. “I didn’t realize—of course I will keep it with me.”

To your surprise, Shouto calmed immediately. The snarl faded from his mouth, his lips resuming their normal soft, sweet shape, and his other hand came to rest at your waist, pulling you a fraction closer to him.

“You promise,” he asked, though it was phrased more like a statement than a question.

You had to fight back a shocked laugh at how easily he’d been rerouted, and how unbelievably fleeting and childish that little tantrum had been. A prince of his people and here he was, getting fussy with you!

There was nothing for your exasperated snort, your helpless smile. “Yes, yes, I promise. But you have to help me collect another piece of white coral from where you got it originally. I promise it’s important.”

Shouto’s hands tightened on you, and you found yourself being dragged closer, so that he was holding you up in the water, only inches from the hard planes of his chest. His tail brushed against the inside of your thigh, the scales rasping lightly over the skin there. You went still, a little thrill racing up your spine at his sudden, more immediate proximity.

“You want me to take you there,” he said, his voice suddenly a little deeper.

You blinked. “I—yes? Is that…okay?”

Shouto’s eyes narrowed in on you, and you shifted nervously in his hold as his pupils went a little more slitted, a little more inhumanly focused. “It is an area of some significance to my people, though it is now difficult to get to. Your kind has begun to touch it.”

Your interest piqued. Humans had begun to touch it, alright. Judging by the chemical processing agents left behind on the piece of coral Shouto had given you, you could guess exactly which humans had touched it, too.

“Is it Sunfish?” you couldn’t help but ask, perking up in his hold.

Shouto inclined his head, a movement that brought his mouth almost dangerously close to yours. Your breath choked off in your lungs.

“Yes,” Shouto replied. “The…microbes you are interested in, then…? They are to do with Sunfish?”

You nodded excitedly, eagerly sucking in another breath. “Yes, yes! God, I’m so stupid, I should have told you earlier—anything to do with where Sunfish is operating is of interest to me. We’ve been testing the—um, the microbes to put it simply—around the area but if Sunfish has somewhere we haven’t been yet, that’s what I’m looking to know.”

Shouto looked thoughtful, and a claw trailed absently down the skin of your arm. You jumped, startled.

“Then I will take you,” he said, eyes cutting back to yours. “On one condition.”

You felt your eyebrows raise. Well that was unexpected of him. Who knew mermen knew how to bargain?

“Name your price,” you told him.

Shouto’s mouth quirked then, a hint of a sharp incisor showing, but the rest of his expression was strangely sincere. “I want dinner and a movie,” he said, a claw trailing sweetly, absently down the skin of your arm again. “Like you said humans do.”

You could feel your eyebrows escaping towards your hairline, your mouth going slack. “You want to watch a movie and have dinner,” you repeated, floored.

Shouto inclined his head, the damp strands of red and white mingling with the movement. “You said I would like a movie.”

Damn. You had said that, hadn’t you? But you couldn’t think how in the hell you were going to get Shouto to a movie. It wasn’t like there was a movie theater on this island, and besides that it wasn’t like you could just piggyback a real life merman into one.

You supposed if pressed, you could preload something on the shitty island wifi and then bring your laptop down to the beach and watch things that way. But what if someone spotted the light and came looking? Shouto could disappear quick enough, you had no doubt, but how to explain the laptop?

And then it occurred to you: the inn had a maintenance shed, just off the main office. A sudden image came to you of wheeling Shouto uphill in a wheelbarrow, getting him into the tub in your room, and setting up a few pillows for yourself, and some kind of dinner spread on the floor.

It was unconventional. But then—so was the idea of dinner and a movie with a merman at all.

You stuck out your hand, making a mental note to swing by the maintenance shed on your way back in tonight. “It’s a deal.”

Shouto stared at your fingers, seeming not to know what to do with the gesture, until you took one of his hands in your own, pumping it up and down. He held on for too long after that, those crimson-tipped fingers closing in over your own, warm and wet and strong.

“Then I will take you now, if you like,” Shouto said. “If you are ready.”

You nodded, paddling your feet a little uselessly in his hold, in eager anticipation. Confirmation of Sunfish’s activity, and the chance to see a place meaningful to Shouto and his people. It was a dream come true for any marine biologist.

Shouto let you go, following you slowly as you paddled back to the boat, swimming leisurely, looping circles around you. He helped boost you back into the boat, and then hauled himself up after you on the strength of his arms alone. The back of your neck went very warm, as you watched his muscle coil and flex as he pulled himself in, then looked at you imploringly.

“I will point the way and you will take us,” he said, slithering across the floor of the boat to slide in next to you behind the wheel. He peered at all the meters and dials interestedly, pressing a crimson claw to one.

You had to laugh at the ridiculousness of a merman sitting behind the wheel of a boat, and another wild idea occurred to you.

“Wanna learn how to drive?” you asked.

Shouto’s eyes slid over to you, turquoise and grey pinning you to your seat. “To operate the boat?”

You nodded. Another hot flush crept across your cheeks as a slow smile spread over Shouto’s mouth, those mismatched eyes glittering.

“Yes,” he said. “I should like that very much.”

You gestured him over to your seat, rising out of it as Shouto slid all that heavy muscle your way, the scales of his tail bright and fiery in the sun. He was warm and smelled like salt up close, and you tried not to take note of the way his bicep flexed as he moved to grip the wheel in taloned fingers.

You gave him a brief run through of all the meters and gauges, the fuel level meter, speedometer, the ammeter and engine hours. He seemed disinterested in all but the speed—a typical man, even if only his upper half looked it.

Then you showed him the throttle and how to turn the key to start and what degrees of movement of the wheel at a higher speed wouldn’t send both of you flying out of the boat. And then you sank down next to him, gripping the seat for safety as he started the boat, looking thrilled.

He guided the boat off the reef more carefully than you would have expected, but he grew bolder as you made it out into deeper waters, applying a ton of throttle instantly and sending you falling backwards in your seat. You zoomed across the gentle waves, horrifyingly fast, but unexpectedly smoothly for someone who had just learned. Shouto seemed intimately familiar with the island’s layout, navigating smoothly through some of the shallow channels that gave you an almost-regular heart attack, gliding easily across the waves and not seeming to catch a single one the wrong way.

A thrilled laugh bit out of you, getting lost in the wind as you sped across the sea. Shouto’s mouth pulled into a wider smile, looking pleased with himself, those sharp teeth white in the sun. You found yourself smiling, at the ludicrousness of being driven around by a merprince, and at how much Shouto looked like he was enjoying himself.

In almost no time Shouto was steering you into a shallow cove on the eastern side of the island a couple hundred meters away from where you’d laid out an observation station. As you slowed to a stop you helped anchor the boat, feeling your brows furrowing back down in confusion, the smile slipping off your face.

If there was any level of pollution in this cove then you would have known about it from the nearby observation station. You weren’t sure if Shouto had the right spot.

But as you turned back to him he pointed a claw towards the jut of the land, aiming with certainty. “There used to be a cave through which we could access the lagoon,” he said. “But it is blocked off to us now.”

You stared at him, befuddled. “Blocked off? By what?”

Shouto’s mouth thinned into an irritated line. “By some human invention—I do not know what it is.”

Your eyebrows raised. “Then—how did you get the coral out of this, uh, lagoon if you can’t access it?”

Shouto’s eyes dipped, following your words as your mouth shaped them, looking strangely intent. Your ears went hot.

“I climbed,” he said simply.

You whipped around to stare back at the strip of land rising into the jungle. You could just make out a clearing in the trees where you thought a lagoon might lay. And it was no small distance. Your jaw dropped, imagining Shouto having to drag himself over meters and meters of land to get there.

Your stomach fluttered, the white coral suddenly taking on a new significance if Shouto had gone to such trouble for it. It had to be more than just an area of interest to his people—-it more likely had to be extremely significant if this was the length merpeople had to go for this coral. No wonder he hadn’t liked the idea of you testing it, of you surrendering it and mailing it out and away, if he’d had to pull himself over land like that to get it.

And with this realization, a new, wildly disconcerting thought crept over you, an insane flight of fancy.

Was it possible that Shouto had given you… not just a friendly gift, but something even more meaningful than you had initially realized? If this was a site of cultural significance, and he’d suffered to get the coral for you—did it mean something a little bit more intimate than an exchange between new friends?

Your gaze darted back over to Shouto, sitting pertly in his seat. He struck such a handsome profile, all sleek muscle and delicately carved features, his face carefully-noted and almost supernaturally angelic. His coloring, too, was magnificent, the rose of his scar, the deep scarlet of his scales and his claws. And he was so sweet, and funny, and so very interesting. He was unlike anything—anyone—you had ever seen, and the thought of him fetching you a gift of special significance made an even more blistering wave of heat flare up in your belly.

You rose from your seat, determined to see this lagoon for yourself.

“Alright, you wait here,” you told Shouto, “I’m going to go check it out.”

He nodded, watching you closely as you went to the bag of supplies, fishing out a camera, the log book, your shoes, and a couple pieces of sampling equipment. You stuffed them all in a dry bag, rolling the top down tight and buckling securely.

“You will be careful,” Shouto intone in his deep voice, more an order than a question.

You smiled up at him, nodding your head. “Yes. I’ll be back in just a couple of minutes.”

He looked satisfied with that, and helped lower you down into the water to swim for land. He slithered off the edge beside you, sinking smoothly into the water like a dropped stone, and swam along underneath you, following you all the way until you clambered onto the sand. You hurriedly dug around in your bag for your shoes, stuffing your feet into them still sandy and damp as Shouto looked on.

Once properly outfitted, you followed the beach as it trailed off into scrub and bushes, and then into towering palms, making your way into the jungle. The sun shone brightly through the leaves, painting everything around you in shades of sunlit green, the air under the canopy thicker than on the beach. Your feet slid over the damp sand in your sneakers, a sensation you did not particularly enjoy, but you walked briskly, your curiosity leading you onwards.

In only a few minutes, the trees once again gave way to a small strip of sand, and you spilled out onto the beach of the lagoon.

It was instantly clear to you exactly what Shouto had meant. A large metallic wall dammed off one side of the lagoon, most probably blocking off the underwater channel Shouto had told you about. It had been bolted into the jutting coral and rock around it, sealing off any water flow. Around it, the ancient coral walls of the lagoon were bone white wherever the water lapped at them, disturbingly bleached of color, and you thought the scrub and the trees that had built up over the surface overtime looked a little bit unhealthy too.

Shouto had most definitely gotten his coral from here.

As you looked around your certainty grew, until you spotted the most damning evidence. Only a scant few meters away from where you had come out of the forest, there was a pipe dug into the earth, sitting about a meter above the water level of the lagoon. It was still shiny, clearly new, and it was also dribbling the occasional bit of liquid into the lagoon, as if someone were piping certain substances out and away from the rest of their facilities.

Your heart rate doubled at the sight, and you knew even as you unloaded your equipment to take samples that you had found exactly what you had been looking for.

There was no doubt in your mind that this pipe led back to Sunfish. And Shouto had indeed just solved this entire case.

[coochiequeens]

Is anyone really surprised?

Gender-neutral lavatories are more dirty than men's and women's toilets, a new study has claimed.

The study examined the levels of bacteria in various types of hospital toilets.  

Lavatories for women were found to carry far fewer microbes than those for men. For instance when staff toilets were compared, door handles for men were found to be around eight times as dirty as those for women.

Gender-neutral lavatories are more dirty than men's and women's toilets, a new study has claimed.

The study examined the levels of bacteria in various types of hospital toilets.  

Lavatories for women were found to carry far fewer microbes than those for men. For instance when staff toilets were compared, door handles for men were found to be around eight times as dirty as those for women.

Professor Stephanie Dancer, a consultant microbiologist and researcher at NHS Lanarkshire said: 'The move to convert traditional male and female facilities to unisex facilities in some hospitals raises concern that people might be exposed to higher risks of contamination.

'Single sex and disabled toilets should be retained; with additional facilities labelled unisex and available for anyone. But based on this study's findings, I don't believe we should be abandoning single sex toilets in favour of unisex toilets, since these toilets had the highest microbial burden overall. 

'Our results appear to confirm what is generally thought in society: women clean because their perception of dirt and disgust entices action whereas men either don't notice a dirty environment or don't care. It follows that women are more likely to leave a bathroom 'clean', while men assume someone will clean up after them.' 

The study involved swabbing 10 different surfaces in six types of toilets across three general hospitals in Lanarkshire, Scotland.

It has not yet been published in full, but it was presented at the ESCMID Global CongressESCMID Global Congress in Barcelona, Spain, which was held from April 27 to 30.

Heather Binning, of the feminist group Women's Rights Network, told The Telegraph the research confirmed 'what we have always known'.

She said: 'Men do not have the same hygiene standards as women and mixed-sex toilets are far dirtier than those which are used only by women and girls.' 

The research team found floors and high surfaces yielded higher levels of aerobic bacteria and fungi than hand-touch sites. They stated this was likely due to the fact that hand-touch sites are cleaned more thoroughly than other surfaces

Pathogens such as E.coli, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and Klebsiella pneumoniae were as likely to be found on air vents, ceilings and the top of doors as on floors. 

Professor Dancer said: 'In contrast with hand-touch sites, floors are a major repository of dirt. Anything in the air eventually ends up on the floor, along with whatever is brought in on people's footwear or shed from skin and clothes when they use the toilet.'

'We think that the only logical explanation for this is that toilet flushing aerosolises whatever is in the toilet bowl, whereupon tiny water particles carrying these organisms fly up to the ceiling and contaminate high sites.' 

'Airborne microorganisms and contaminated surfaces carry a potential risk for infection. Hospital toilets should have lids, which should be closed before you flush, and patient toilets should be cleaned more frequently than other toilets.' 

However the researchers state that none of the toilets sampled in the study had a window, and they would be interested to see how the results would change with an abundant supply of fresh air.

Professor Dancer also advises for people to wash their hands and close the toilet lid before flushing at home. 

[kitchenwitchery72]

Herbalism 101: Lemon

EP. 7

Fun fact

Lemons are technically berries!

Properties : clarity, friendship, happiness, protection

Uses in the kitchen

Lemon is used for its tart flavor. It can be found in many desserts, pastries, and cocktails. They can also be used to clean or make a simmer pot, leaving your home smelling fresh.

Uses in healing

Lemon has been found to have anti microbial properties and is a great source of vitamin C. Some say that drinking lemon juice can get rid of hiccups as well!

Uses in witchcraft

If you work with the moon, leaving lemons or parts of lemons on your altar to honor the moon is a great use. I often use the dried peels, dehydrated in the oven, in spell jars and charm bags. Another common use for lemon is in protective work. Things like a cleansing bath, a protective jar etc. are great uses for lemon.

Tips for growing at home

Lemons are not particularly difficult to grow, however if you live in a place with a harsh winter, chances are it will not thrive. Don't forget, lemon trees will take around two years to bear fruit, so be patient! Finally, you can grow these trees in a pot indoors, but they will need full sun.

Recipe

This is technically a repeat of an old recipe I have posted before, but I am changing out lavender for lemon because I make these all the time and they are a crowd pleaser.

Lemon shortbread cookies

4 cups flour

1 cup powdered sugar

1lb salted butter

2 drops lemon extract

Lemon zest for the looks

Combine the ingredients with the butter still a bit chilled. You can make little balls or roll it out to cut out shapes, you may need a little extra flour for this. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

[bogleech]

If I bring up the number of microorganisms that we have to kill just to harvest, clean and cook a plant some of those ARA weirdos will react like it’s a shitty attempt at a bad faith “gotcha” but legitimately why doesn’t that matter?

 We aren’t talking protozoa and bacteria with literally no brains; every single plant, every inch of healthy soil, is full of nematode worms and tardigrades and rotifers and microbial mites and they all have entire little brains and senses, many of them have eyes, some have whole elaborate courtship rituals, some are social, some practice maternal care, do people just plain not know that microbial life includes complete multicellular animals with central nervous systems and habits as complex as any bird or fish or frog?

[apas-95]

Clean EVAs

When conducting an EVA, it is always important to maintain both a sterile communication environment, as well as a microbially-sterile pressurelock environment.

It is your responsibility as a spacewalker to maintain that sterile environment, both for the safety of yourself and of others. After every jump, and whenever in the jump, you must remember to follow Clean EVA procedures.

The exterior of almost every pressurised vessel in space is host to anaerobic bacteria and extremophiles, due to transfer from internal atmosphere, or from components constructed by hand. Some microbes may develop stronger resistance to radiation and extreme temperature through exposure to conditions experienced by an average spaceframe — while radiation and extreme temperature are themselves currently the most common methods for sterilising microbial life, in medical equipment, scientific instruments, and foodstuffs.

Review Questions 1

[turtlesandfrogs]

You know what's annoying? When people are like, '~oh, we have more allergies today because of all the anti-microbial soap/we're too clean/we don't live with animals today. You'd probably not have allergies if you were raised in a more natural way~'

Do you know who was raised without anti-microbial soaps, in a house that could not be described as "too clean", on a farm with a range of animals both avian and mammalian? Who spent hours and hours outside in either the forest or in the garden or the fields? Just running around barefoot and munching on berries and having home grown food at every meal?

Me. And I still have year-round allergies that make me a snotty, drippy, congested, itch-eyed, foggy brained mess if I don't take my medication. Though I've mostly grown out of the asthma, at least.

[macgyvermedical]

How does microbially-sterilizing living animals, such as maggots for wound cleaning, and mice and other test subjects for in vivo lab research about infections and immunosuppression, work?

The inside of most eggs (including fly eggs) and uteri are sterile. 

Because of this, sterilizing the outside of fly eggs with a chemical preparation and then allowing them to hatch in a sterile environment produces sterile maggots. 

Sterile mice are born by cesarean section and then raised under sterile conditions with sterile mice foster parents. That way, they never encounter bacteria. 

[bonefall]

you said maggots have a use in medicine? I’m very interested in learning what that is

I'm warning you, it's definitely not for the faint of heart. This is also related to surgical discussion.

So if discussion of wounds, insects, infection, or any of these things mixing BUGS YOU then you're gonna wanna skip this one!

CW for medical gore and maggots. (no pictures though)

Maggots of green and blue bottleflies are shoveled right into open wounds, and then wrapped up so they don't escape... or tickle. They only eat dead matter, so they're very helpful for cleaning rotten flesh out of a necrotic wound. Medically speaking, this process is called "debridement."

They also prevent infection with their anti-microbial secretions, wounds treated with the maggots of blue bottleflies have a considerably lower chance of going septic.

I talk a lot about honey being the #1 disinfectant "herb" for cats to use. That's really good for superficial cuts and the initial disinfecting. Once you're caring for the recovery of a really nasty, deep wound, maggots are a medic's best friend.

Cuts, claw scratches = Honey will do.

Rips, gorges, holes = Maggots

They're even used in modern medicine- maggot therapy is FDA approved and sometimes used in treating skin ulcers in diabetic patients.

You might turn up your nose at it-- but really, it's not much worse than the alternative. The dead flesh needs to undergo debridement somehow, better it happens naturally via some harmless little animals than chemicals or scraping it out with a knife.

You can kinda think of it like a cleaning. Like those little fishes on the reef that clean the skin of bigger fish. They only eat what you don't want.

[timesofpharma]

Clean Room Validation Action Limits for Viable Bacterial and Fungal Count

Clean Room Validation Action Limits for Viable Bacterial and Fungal Count

Clean Room Validation Microbial Count Limits method settle plate contact plate viable bacterial fungal count limits frequency of validation. Classification of clean rooms in pharmaceutical manufacturing companies is part of validation activity, a clean room is designed to provide the desired level of clean grade environment. but it’s rated only to a particular grade after it is validated that the…