This learn node illustration is from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on Public Health Biology: page 26 of Lecture 5 (PDF). The Johns Hopkins course is an excellent source for learning about how diseases infect us, how they make us sick. and how they can become resistant to drugs. A particularly lethal bacteria is very much in the news for its drug resistance: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). An excellent primer on MRSA can be found at the online Mayo Clinic.

We all want to know how to keep the bacteria from finding us and making us sick – or even killing us. Today the New York Times published answers to many of our questions about how to stay well as this superbug bacteria gets more resistant and more wide-spread.

As you have probably been hearing and reading, washing our hands is a key way to keep safe from the superbugs. Below are links to webpages reviewing how and why do to that. One of the things I learned from finding them is to use the towel I dry with to turn off the faucet: it protects from reinfecting my hands (makes sense).
How To Wash Your Hands (video)
The National Food Service Management Institute
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Caught Dirty-Handed MicroWorld games

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Lady bug star in this learn node, noting that this week 720,000 lady bugs were released by groundskeepers to find and kill pests harming plants and grass at a major New York City housing complex. Ladybugs, also called lady beetles, are natural enemies of many insects, especially aphids and other sap feeders. The beetle brigades are being used in the New York project to protect the greenery without using chemical insecticides. The tiny bugs are awesome predators: one lady bug can eat as many as 5000 aphids in her lifetime. Not only ladybugs are serving as beetle battlers for the green world. For another example, a Michigan report describes how beetles take a bite out of purple loosestrife.

There are an awful lot of beetles � and a lot beetle websites, often with titles including their scientific order name Coleoptera. The Coleopterists Society home page begins: “We live in the age of the beetles: Beetles, the insect order Coleoptera, are the dominant form of life on earth. One of every five living species of all animals or plants is a beetle! . . . ” Many of the beetle species have shown up online; for one example there are the beautiful Bembidion �where the webpage is the direct presentation of a scientist who is a leading expert on the species he showcases.

The beetle breakout of body parts in the image above is from a Russia Zoological Institute Beetles (Colelptera) and Coleopterists exhibit. From anatomy to poetry and ecology to jewelry, the exhibit showcases our human fascination with the dominant form of life on earth.

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