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a culture of service...
January, 2010 Edition
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Micro Musings...
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Had your coffee yet?
Click here
to see if the caffeine is working for you.
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New drug to combat
Staph infections
Telavancin Released
A new drug has been approved to add to the arsenal against resistant forms of
Staphylococcus
aureus
. In September of last year the FDA cleared Telavancin (brand name: Vibativ) for marketing by its manufacturer, Theravance of Northern California.
This new antimicrobial is approved for use against MRSA and other gram positive cocci in the treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infections (cSSSI).
Administered intravenously, Telavancin will be valuable in the fight against Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). In addition, an application is currently pending for the use of Telavancin for nosocomial pneumonia. It is thought that Telavancin may have some advantages over Vancomycin in activity against gram positive cocci.
Hardy Diagnostics offers Telavancin disks for use in susceptibility testing.
Click here
for more information.
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Rapid Urea Medium
For the detection of Helicobacter pylori
Hardy's Rapid Urea Medium is ideal for the detection of
Helicobacter pylori
from gastric biopsy specimens. It can also be used for the detection of Cryptococcus and Proteus, both strong producers of urease.
Click here
for technical information.
Click here
for a cost comparison study.
Click here
for the catalog listing.
Click here
to try a sample.
Photo showing a positive urease reaction in Rapid Urea Medium, Cat. no. Z54.
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Detection of
Dermatophytes
Made Easy
______________________________________________
To detect common ringworm (Tinea), Hardy's Dermatophyte Test Medium (DTM) can produce clear results within a few days in most cases. DTM is highly selective for the dermatophytes;
Microsporum spp
,
Trichophyton spp
, and
Epidermophyton spp
. Skin scrapings placed on the agar will turn bright red if dermatophytic fungi are present.
Click here
for more information.
Click here
for the catalog listing.
Click here
to request free samples.
Click here
to see all our mycology products.
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Think about it...
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Why is "bra" singlular and "panties" plural?
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Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground ?
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Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp ?
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Why is the "Alphabet Song" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" sung to the same tune?
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Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
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Foot in Mouth Disease
Quotes they
wish you would forget...
"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president."
- Hillary Rodham Clinton,
December, 1993
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Want to receive the MicroBytes
Newsletter
at home?
CLICK HERE
Want to review past issues of MicroBytes?
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Did you know?
Hardy Diagnostics...
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Manufactures over
3,000 products
for microbiology for you to choose from.
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Stocks over
12,000 laboratory products
to increase your selection of items.
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Maintains six distribution centers in the U.S. for faster turn around time to your lab.
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Has served microbiologists like you for 30 years.
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Is
ISO 13485
certified for the manufacture of medical devices to give you confidence in our products.
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Offers you its technical manual,
HUGO
, which contains over 4,500 pages of information regarding microbiology.
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Maintains a worldwide network of over 30 distributors.
Click here
to view a recent Corporate Profile.
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Advice from the Founders...
"Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own
wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations."
- James Madison
Fourth President of the United States
and "Father of the Constitution"
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What organism can act
as a dangerous gene donor?
and can cause up to
one third of all ICU infections?
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Hardy announces the new...
PlateSaver Bag
A new way to keep your plated media fresh.
Lock in moisture...lock out damaging light.
Bacterial growth can be compromised on media that has lost moisture due to excessive drying during storage. Try out Hardy's new PlateSaver bag to lock in moisture and prevent drying during refrigeration. Our studies show a 97% improvement in water retention over time when the PlateSaver Bag is used. Interested?
More information
is available.
Let us know
if you would like to try out a free sample.
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Seeing is Believing?
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Surroundings matter.
The stars are exactly the same color.
_________________________
"Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
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Why is there so much interest lately?
New Vaccines in the Pipeline
After many years of neglect by the major pharmaceutical companies, there is renewed enthusiasm for the development of new vaccines. In the past, vaccines were considered a low profit endeavor. However, with the recent successes of new vaccines like Gardasil (for HPV) and Prevnar (for pneumococci), drug companies are actively increasing their research budgets. Why?
1. Profits
- Merck's Gardasil took in $1.5 billion the first year it was released. Wyeth's Prevnar made $2.7 billion in 2008 alone. Enormous profits are still being tallied for influenza.
2. Lack of Generic Threat
- Even after patents run out, it is very difficult for generic drug companies to duplicate a vaccine.
3. New Technology
- New methods, like using virus-like particle (VLP) technology, eliminates the need for adjuvants and the tedious culturing in chicken eggs.
4. No Liability
- Vaccine manufacturers have no liability when there are adverse reactions from their vaccines. In 1988 Congress passed the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in which the government provides no-fault pay outs to approved injury claims. It is funded through a 75 cent tax on each vaccine dose purchased in the US.
Here are some of the new vaccines that are in development: Traveler's Diarrhea, RSV, Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Herpes simplex type 2, Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus, Malaria, Epstein-Barr Virus, Typhoid, Cytomegalovirus, and
Staphylococcus aureus
. Of these, only RSV, HIV, and Malaria have made it into phase III clinical trials.
Sometimes called an "oligopoly", the vaccine field is dominated by only five players; Merck, GSK, Wyeth (recently purchased by Pfizer), Novartis, and Sanofi-Adventis.
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Ernest Hemingway
1899 ~ 1961
American Novelist
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."
"About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you
feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing
them for the first time."
"All things truly wicked start from innocence."
"As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort
of necessary."
"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details
of how he lived and how he died that distinguishes one man from another."
"Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in
wealth."
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening
carefully. Most people never listen."
"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when
I'm awake, you know?"
"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in
the best and simplest way."
"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be
won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
"The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins
to live more simply without."
"The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People
were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good
as spring itself."
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a
typewriter and bleed."
"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes
a master."
"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I
hate very much to leave it."
__________________
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You can find more of Leigh Rubin's cartoon humor by
clicking here
for a daily Rubes cartoon.
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Did you notice?
The Wolf Moon
Shines Brighter
Last Saturday night (Jan. 30) we had a full moon that appeared bigger and brighter than usual. In fact, it was the biggest and brightest full moon that you will see all year.
This is called a
perigee moon
. Since the moon travels in an elliptical orbit around earth, there are two times during its 29.5 day cycle in which the moon is 31,050 miles (50,000 km) closer to the earth. When that closest pass coincides with a full moon, it is called a perigee moon.
The perigee moon last Saturday night appeared 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full moons that you will see during the year. You can also expect higher tides and thus more polluted beaches during this time.
So why the
Wolf Moon
? This is the name given to the first moon of the new year by Native Americans many years ago. It is the time that wolves, hungry from the long winter, howl at the moon during the long cold nights.
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Warning: Pun Zone Ahead
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I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
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She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
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