Small Things Considered

Summer Vacation

by the STC team
We are taking our customary two week vacation. Do you think we deserve it ? Looking forward to seeing you again on July 5th ! Read more →

Retrospective, January to June 2021

by Elio | We list here our posts from the last half year, briefly annotated. Read more →

Small Animals Considered

by Roberto | When queried about the largest animals (a.k.a. metazoans) on Earth, I venture to guess that most readers will point to the blue whales, those magnificent marine mammals that can reach lengths of up to 30 meters and weigh upwards of 200 metric tons. Read more →

Teachers Corner: Chalks Talks vs PowerPoints

by Elio | Two years ago today, Christopher Waters from Michigan State University posted a preprint in bioRxiv entitled "Rock the Chalk: A five-year comparative analysis of a large microbiology lecture course reveals improved outcomes of chalk-talk compared to PowerPoint." It is a good read... Read more →

Names, New and Strange – A Snippet

by Elio
Are you baffled by the advent of so many new species of bacteria, most carrying unusual names? Let me throw a few at you: Adlercreutzia equolifaciens subsp. celatus, Bacillus velezensis, Butti­auxella agrestis, Cupriavidus basilensis, Curtobacterium... Read more →

Color is in the Eye of the Bacteria-Beholder

by Janie | Pigmentation is a straightforward colora­tion: the color is the same from every viewing angle. In contrast, structural col­oration is in the eye of the beholder: the colors are dependent on the viewing angle... Read more →

Happy Birthday Elio!

by Roberto and the STC team | Not long ago, Elio offered some mus­ings "On Old Age." As is of­ten the case when read­ing Elio's writ­ings, the first couple of sen­ten­ces al­ready taught me se­ve­ral les­sons. For one, I learn­ed a new word, se­nec­ti­tude. I sus­pect I will be using it more and more with each pas­sing day. But there was more, Elio re­vealed that his birth­day... Read more →

A Losing Battle

by Elio | Relatively few people are aware the virus that causes Covid19 has its own name, to wit, SARS-CoV-2. Outside the scientific literature, this is seldom used. Yet, almost everyone is aware that the AIDS virus is called HIV. But this is exceptional. The overwhelming number of people call a virus after the disease... Read more →

We remember Tom Brock

by Elio | Tom Brock (1926 − 2021) can rea­di­ly be con­sider­ed the father of ex­tre­mo­phile mi­cro­bio­logy. He pio­neered the study of high tem­pe­ra­ture-lov­ing mi­crobes, by in­ves­ti­gat­ing, in a near­ly fro­lic­some way, the hot springs of Yel­low­stone Park. He car­ried out this work pret­ty much alone, with both ex­pe­ri­men­tal in­ge­nuity and con­cept­ual gusto, ... Read more →

Fungomania II. A (not so) new face of Fusarium

by Roberto | This is a story about fusaria by an admittedly non-expert. Much of what I write in this post I just recently learned, thus revealing from the start my naïveté on the fascinating subject of fungi as high protein foods. Read more →