Harper's Postulates

Cambridge Hands-On Science Summer Roadshow 2018

The Cambridge Hands-On Science (CHaOS) Summer Roadshow was granted a Public Engagement Grant this summer for an event between 30 June to 18 August 2018. 

A team of volunteer students from the University of Cambridge toured the country with a range of interactive experiments designed to show children aged 9 to 13 and families that STEM subjects, including microbiology, are fun and accessible to…

Allison Cartwright is our ECS Publications Officer. Here she looks at the glactic intersection between space travel and microbiology.

For months my Dad has asked me to write a blog on space. The amount of space junk that’s floating around is a regular feature of family discussions.

Stellar rubbish may become less of a worry, as tests are being run to collect the waste with big nets and bring it…

Here’s the tea

Some gardeners swear by it. Others are not so sure. Heba A K Ibrahim from the Desert Research Center in Egypt argues that compost tea is a cop’s best friend.

Compost tea is defined as filtered product of compost (Litterick et al. 2004) steeped in any solvent, usually water, for more than an hour (NOSB 2004). Either actively aerating (aerated compost tea, ACT) or not (non-aerated compost tea, NCT)…

The future is phage?

Roshan Nepal is  a Research Associate at Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal MDN (cmdn.org), primarily working on PREDICT project – part of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program. He went to a meeting in Poland to become acquainted with the latest phage research. 

EMBO Workshop Viruses of Microbes V: Biodiversity and Future Applications – also called EMBO Workshop on Viruses of the…

Lab grown food of the future

Allison Cartwright is our ECS Publications Officer. Here she looks at the potential for lab grown food to solve issues of sustainability.

The world population is 7.6 billion (May 2018) having grown by 1 billion in the last 12 years [1]. Every additional human is another mouth for the planet to feed, adding pressure on resources.

In addition, modern medicine also means we are living for longer. As…

Bringing protistology to the public

In parallel with the XXII meeting of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology (ISEP) jointly organised with Protistology-UK society and the Biological Sciences Department of the University of Cyprus, we organised two outreach (Open to the Public) events, which were mainly sponsored by the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM).

Both events were incredibly successful and enabled us…

Superbugs- an Arms Race against Bacteria

Earlier this year, the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) hosted an event at the British Medical Association (BMA) to celebrate Lord Jim O’Neill’s honorary fellowship.

He gave an entertaining and authentic acceptance speech. In fact, not at all what one might expect from a Lord. Or an economist. He spoke without the hollow jargon that politicians of a certain stripe seem to favour. He…

Could microbes help us solve our plastic problem?

When I moved to Northern Ireland in 2001 my family lived beside the Bann. This tidal river mouth showed one of man’s greatest impacts on the planet – plastic waste.

No matter how often we collected litter from these river banks, more was back the next day. Having studied marine science, I’ve been surrounded by talk of plastic pollution for years, but since BBC Plant Earth II, more people are…

Take me to the river

Brenda Parker applied for an International Capacity Building fund for a research visit and workshop at the Noyyal Basin in Tamil Nadu. Here she explains how it went.

Knowledge transfer on the sustainability of innovative wastewater treatment technologies to India

Untreated industrial wastewater pollution, primarily from textile production, threatens water resources in central Tamil Nadu, India,…

Too much or not enough: health research and Evidence Week in Parliament

Microbiologists don’t need any help when it comes to unpicking health research and evidence. Many of us encounter it on a daily basis, whether first-hand through lab work or through reading journal articles and reviews.

However, the story is different for the wider public. Most will only be able to access information through news stories, social media and websites (e.g. NHSChoices or WebMD), or…

Microbes Vs Insects Vs humans

While exploring the countryside with kids completing their expedition for the Duke of Edinburgh Award, there’s one uniting experience for all participants. As with other walkers, we’re all being eaten alive by insects.

Sure, we have insect repellent, but it doesn’t seem to be working to an acceptable level. Did I miss a patch during application? Or are the nippers immune to the repellent?

Midge…

As an undergraduate and then PhD student, I have to confess that I never really noticed any issues surrounding equality – perhaps I was too busy studying, doing my bench research, or maybe I spent too much time in the pub. However, in more recent times, and as I have advanced through my career, my eyes have been opened to inequality, either through personal experience, or by witnessing the…

Coming out was never going to be easy. I was raised Catholic and attended a convent school. My desperate struggles to fit in and conform to society had a severe impact on my mental health. Aged 16, I came out to my family after years of deliberation.

The following two years were exceptionally difficult, feeling isolated and rejected: I had no idea whether I’d ever be accepted.

Finding inspiration

As courses come to an end and attention turns to holidays, it’s hard not to think about the different microbes one may encounter on trip. There are occasional news stories of ‘holidays from hell’ where travellers winds up in hospital.

I’m glad to see that the SfAM summer conference has some presentations to focus on this matter, but what microbes might be encountered on my travels to the…