December 31, 2014

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A look back at 2014

It was a scant blogging year for me, what with defending my PhD thesis, launching a masters program at Harvard and getting married. But I still have a couple of posts I’m proud of: It’s only been a couple of months, but it’s already hard to remember what life was like before my fermentation obsession.

By Kevin Bonham

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

It was a scant blogging year for me, what with defending my PhD thesis, launching a masters program at Harvard and getting married. But I still have a couple of posts I'm proud of:

It's only been a couple of months, but it's already hard to remember what life was like before my fermentation obsession. I'm now up to 5 batches of sourkraut, 2 batches of mead, a batch of country wine, 2 batches of ginger beer and a sourdough starter (from which I made savory pancakes, bread coming this weekend). Expect to see plenty more on the science of fermentation in the coming year. Even my lab research is fermentation-based.

The same things that slowed down my blogging also slowed down my reading of the scientific literature, but I managed a couple of posts of recent papers, from hospital sewage and antibiotic resistance, to microbes in your latte, to yogurt and mouse testicles. Most of my literature-based blogging has been more microbe and less immunology related, but I'm hoping to bring more of a balance to 2015. It's amazing how difficult it is to stay abreast of multiple fields at once... there's so much!

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And of course, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk more about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), though I was pretty quiet on this beat this year, with one post about GMOs and allergies, and another about using genetically modified fungi to make cheese.

I've got plenty of ideas for 2015, and with the recent reorganization of this blog network (and upcoming redesign), I've got more reason and motivation to keep it up. See you in 2015!

Kevin Bonham is a Curriculum Fellow in the Microbiology and Immunobiology department at Harvard Medical school. He received his PhD from Harvard, where he studied how the cells of the immune system detect the presence of infectious microbes. Find him on Google+, Reddit.

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