Word: bacterias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest battle, but it remains to be seen which side will win the war. On Tuesday, Pharmacia-Upjohn received FDA approval for the first completely new type of antibiotic in more than 35 years. The medication comes as a welcome weapon in the war on "superbugs," mutated bacteria that, over the generations, have grown immune to the old-standby antibiotics. The new drug, Zyvox, is not a cure-all - it attacks only certain forms of bacteria - but in tests it cured two thirds of the patients with strains of staph that are immune to the strongest antibiotics currently available...
...BOTTLED Many parents assume that drinking bottled water is healthier for their families, but recent research shows that may not be true. Tap water is actually more closely monitored by the EPA for bacteria and pollutants. About 20% of bottled water contains higher levels of bacteria than does the tap water in most cities. Another concern is fluoridation: only 5% of bottled water contains recommended levels of fluoride. If your children are drinking primarily bottled water, check with your dentist to see if fluoride supplements are needed...
...they maintain that in most places beyond Earth, radiation and heat levels are so high, life-friendly planets so scarce and the cosmic bombardments--like the one that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago--so severe that the only life-forms that might make it would be bacteria-like critters living deep in the soil. The odds against technologically advanced societies, they argue, are astronomical...
...matter. E-noses have other, more practical uses. Osmetech, a British e-nose company, has dedicated itself to the detection of diseases. Its e-nose can sniff out six of the seven types of bacteria responsible for urinary-tract infections. Microsensor Systems of Orlando, Fla., makes a $9,800 portable device equipped with crystal sensors that can sniff out spoiling food and chemical weapons with equal ease. Caltech researchers sent one of their chips on John Glenn's space-shuttle mission last year to keep tabs on the quality of the cabin air. An adventurous Cyranose was even used...
Looking to the future, researchers would like to take advantage of some of Mother Nature's own ideas to design new chemotherapy drugs. Scientists at Vion Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, Conn., are interested in co-opting a group of Salmonella bacteria that normally attack the intestines and cause dysentery. Salmonella, it happens, also happily infect all kinds of tumors, including colon cancer. By loading genetically crippled salmonella with one of the body's own cancer-fighting chemicals (a molecule called tumor necrosis factor), researchers at Vion hope to destroy or at least shrink a wide variety of cancers. Safety studies...