by Elio
This blog is in its eighth year, a fairly long life as blogs go. We continue to enjoy sharing with you the excitement of unexpected and unusual stories of the microbial world. Not all of it is the latest. You may have noticed if you visit this site with some frequency that we may not favor the latest here in this blog. But looking back into our archives tells that we hardly missed anything important either. In fact, the archive would serve quite well as 'supplementary material' for any virtual encyclopedia of microbiology. Our new layout has a keyword search function that lets you easily access the 800+ entries in the archives. It gets you quicker to your favorite topic than scrolling through the categories.
Of recent, we have had many contributions from students, postdocs, and other guests. We enjoy this, in part because times are changing and social media have become key vehicles for scientific communication. And this blog is a social medium. Yet don't think that we do this to avoid work. On the contrary, we are dedicated editors (and mentors!) and spend a lot of time going over the material we receive.
What we use here is not the Royal We. This is distinctly a team effort, and our "we" is indeed "we." The main contributors to this blog are listed on your right (on mobile: below). Less visible, but no less important, are two additional team members who work for our sponsor, the American Society for Microbiology. Andrea Gwartney is in charge of many technical aspects of this undertaking. Chris Condayan looks over the whole thing and has been with it since the very beginning. Having giving proper credit where is due, let me revert to the first person to express my deep appreciation and admiration for everyone's phenomenal skills and dedication.
And don't forget: you are also part of the team. We are eager to hear from you, so send us your comments, criticisms, ideas, whatever else comes into your mind. Thank you for visiting and enjoy the new academic year.
