My newsletter: Rabies testing, flu surveillance, handwashing, and more

I just finalized another of my quarterly newsletters. While it would be hard to create a lead article as dear to my heart as the one in the July 2011 issue that featured my son's photo, I still found it fascinating. I had to ask a lot of questions to write the lead article; a couple of Rabies laboratorians were very helpful.

The second article features an ongoing influenza surveillance project. While it delves into more technical details, I hope the opening shows you why this kind of analysis is so important.

Countless times throughout the day, I reach for the Camelbak bottle perched to the right of my monitor. As I suck down a long swig of icewater, I take the safety of the contents for granted. Fortunately our Environmental Laboratory is watching out for me, as illustrated in the third article.

For those who submit specimens, we also highlighted our online results reporting, but my readers here might want to skip to the handwashing article. (Incidentally, the simple word "handwashing" was quite the topic of research during the editing process: handwashing, hand washing, hand-washing...? Which is it? We settled on the version used by the CDC in their handwashing tutorial.) I believe strongly in handwashing, as highlighted in a previous blogs. Please read the article to find out more about why it is so important.

• The Laboratorian, October 2011