Scientists agree that exposure to COVID-19 has different outcomes for different people, such as young vs. old, men vs. women, and people residing in different countries. It is also in general agreement that infection rates and resulting death rates are related to the amount of exposure to the number of viruses a person encounters. Some factors that might impact the severity of the results are explored. While washing hands is essential in this era, it may not justify our lifetime practice of isolating ourselves from environmental viruses, bacteria, and allergens. The wisdom of our “scientific” practice of lifetime isolation from...
ruth
FDA recalls 150 brands of hand sanitizers: How can consumers keep track?
With the need to clean hands frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic, hand sanitizers became a hot commodity. The familiar brands such as Purell disappeared from the shelves and consumers needed to resort to buying unfamiliar brands. However, we all quickly discovered that many of the hand sanitizers contained poisonous, undeclared compounds. Early on during the public health COVID-19 emergency, the FDA issued temporary policies to provide flexibility to meet the demand. The guidelines were updated in April, indicating that at least some of the ethanol-based products had harmful chemicals, including gasoline and benzene, known as human carcinogens. Two months ago,...
Cindi
The Smarter Safety Of Food Science-
How nice would it be for the FDA to be able to track the source of a food poisoning illness? To track the origin of the outbreak within seconds versus months? Where is the culture and technology of food safety headed? The FDA will be implementing a plan called New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint as revealed on July 13th, at the virtual SHIFT20 show hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy, and Response Frank Yiannnas outlined the vision behind it. I sat in on the webinar, and here is what I learned
ruth
The VITAL project combines lab-on-chip rapid method and Artificial Intelligence for the rapid method validation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary tool bursting into several fields, offering notable advantages such as speed, accuracy, a recommendation of actions, and faster decisions. Microbiology is a field in which AI could be beneficial, and currently, there are some AI projects under development. This blog reports an innovative project that relies on a combination of two of the most cutting-edge innovations: lab-on-chip rapid method and AI. It is a food safety related-project, focused on the search of a personalized validation scheme for a lab-on-chip rapid method for Salmonella detection by using AI. One of the drawbacks of adopting a...