Microbial Survival in the Environment
Microbial Survival in the Environment

Author: E. Mitscherlich

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 807

ISBN-13: 364269974X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a collection of data on the tenacity in the environment of bacteria and some rickettsiae important in medicine and veterinary medicine. These data are of fundamental importance to physicians, veterinarians, epidemiologists and others when, in their practices, they are confronted with epidemics of contagious diseases or outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. At such times prompt answers are often needed to limit the problem, and thus to protect the public's health. Since data needed for such a purpose are widely distributed in the internatio nal scientific literature, the occasional desperate literature search is likely to miss some of the information that is available. This book seeks to fill that void. It lies in the nature of a compilation such as this is that it can never be totally complete. The compilation requires continual up-dating to include new information, and some currently acceptable information may have to be corrected as new data become available. However, most of the information in this compilation will never be out-of-date. The authors are always thankful for suggestions from others. Collection of the data in this book resulted from, first, several decades of studying the literature, and, second, literature searches made by the Institut fUr Dokumentationswesen in Frankfurt a. M. , the Biomedi zinische Datenbank of Hoechst A. G.

Microbiomes of the Built Environment
Microbiomes of the Built Environment

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-10-06

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0309449839

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

People's desire to understand the environments in which they live is a natural one. People spend most of their time in spaces and structures designed, built, and managed by humans, and it is estimated that people in developed countries now spend 90 percent of their lives indoors. As people move from homes to workplaces, traveling in cars and on transit systems, microorganisms are continually with and around them. The human-associated microbes that are shed, along with the human behaviors that affect their transport and removal, make significant contributions to the diversity of the indoor microbiome. The characteristics of "healthy" indoor environments cannot yet be defined, nor do microbial, clinical, and building researchers yet understand how to modify features of indoor environmentsâ€"such as building ventilation systems and the chemistry of building materialsâ€"in ways that would have predictable impacts on microbial communities to promote health and prevent disease. The factors that affect the environments within buildings, the ways in which building characteristics influence the composition and function of indoor microbial communities, and the ways in which these microbial communities relate to human health and well-being are extraordinarily complex and can be explored only as a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem by engaging the fields of microbial biology and ecology, chemistry, building science, and human physiology. This report reviews what is known about the intersection of these disciplines, and how new tools may facilitate advances in understanding the ecosystem of built environments, indoor microbiomes, and effects on human health and well-being. It offers a research agenda to generate the information needed so that stakeholders with an interest in understanding the impacts of built environments will be able to make more informed decisions.

Planet Formation and Panspermia
Planet Formation and Panspermia

Author: Joseph Seckbach

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1119640938

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An in-depth view of the panspermia hypothesis examined against the latest knowledge of planetary formation and related processes. Panspermia is the concept that life can be passively transported through space on various bodies and seed, habitable planets and moons, which we are beginning to learn may exist in large numbers. It is an old idea, but not popular with those who prefer that life on Earth started on Earth, an alternative, also unproven hypothesis. This book updates the concept of panspermia in the light of new evidence on planet formation, molecular clouds, solar system motions, supernovae ejection mechanisms, etc. Thus, it is to be a book about newly understood prospects for the movement of life through space. The novel approach presented in this book gives new insights into the panspermia theory and its connection with planetary formation and the evolution of galaxies. This offers a good starting point for future research proposals about exolife and a better perspective for empirical scrutiny of panspermia theory. Also, the key to understanding life in the universe is to understand that the planetary formation process is convolved with the evolution of stellar systems in their galactic environment. The book provides the synthesis of all these elements and gives the readers an up-to-date insight on how panspermia might fit into the big picture. Audience Given the intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of the panspermia hypothesis the book will have a wide audience across various scientific disciplines covering astronomy, biology, physics and chemistry. Apart from scientists, the book will appeal to engineers who are involved in planning and realization of future space missions.

Uncultivated Microorganisms
Uncultivated Microorganisms

Author: Slava S. Epstein

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 3540854657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1898, an Austrian microbiologist Heinrich Winterberg made a curious observation: the number of microbial cells in his samples did not match the number of colonies formed on nutrient media (Winterberg 1898). About a decade later, J. Amann qu- tified this mismatch, which turned out to be surprisingly large, with non-growing cells outnumbering the cultivable ones almost 150 times (Amann 1911). These papers signify some of the earliest steps towards the discovery of an important phenomenon known today as the Great Plate Count Anomaly (Staley and Konopka 1985). Note how early in the history of microbiology these steps were taken. Detecting the Anomaly almost certainly required the Plate. If so, then the period from 1881 to 1887, the years when Robert Koch and Petri introduced their key inventions (Koch 1881; Petri 1887), sets the earliest boundary for the discovery, which is remarkably close to the 1898 observations by H. Winterberg. Celebrating its 111th anniversary, the Great Plate Count Anomaly today is arguably the oldest unresolved microbiological phenomenon. In the years to follow, the Anomaly was repeatedly confirmed by all microb- logists who cared to compare the cell count in the inoculum to the colony count in the Petri dish (cf., Cholodny 1929; Butkevich 1932; Butkevich and Butkevich 1936). By mid-century, the remarkable difference between the two counts became a universally recognized phenomenon, acknowledged by several classics of the time (Waksman and Hotchkiss 1937; ZoBell 1946; Jannasch and Jones 1959).

Environmental Microbiology
Environmental Microbiology

Author: Ian Pepper

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2011-10-13

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 0080919405

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For microbiology and environmental microbiology courses, this leading textbook builds on the academic success of the previous edition by including a comprehensive and up-to-date discussion of environmental microbiology as a discipline that has grown in scope and interest in recent years. From environmental science and microbial ecology to topics in molecular genetics, this edition relates environmental microbiology to the work of a variety of life science, ecology, and environmental science investigators. The authors and editors have taken the care to highlight links between environmental microbiology and topics important to our changing world such as bioterrorism and national security with sections on practical issues such as bioremediation, waterborne pathogens, microbial risk assessment, and environmental biotechnology.WHY ADOPT THIS EDITION? New chapters on: - Urban Environmental Microbiology - Bacterial Communities in Natural Ecosystems - Global Change and Microbial Infectious Disease - Microorganisms and Bioterrorism - Extreme Environments (emphasizing the ecology of these environments) - Aquatic Environments (now devoted to its own chapter- was combined with Extreme Environments) Updates to Methodologies: - Nucleic Acid -Based Methods: microarrays, phyloarrays, real-time PCR, metagomics, and comparative genomics - Physiological Methods: stable isotope fingerprinting and functional genomics and proteomics-based approaches - Microscopic Techniques: FISH (fluorescent in situ hybridization) and atomic force microscopy - Cultural Methods: new approaches to enhanced cultivation of environmental bacteria - Environmental Sample Collection and Processing: added section on air sampling

Microbial Threats to Health
Microbial Threats to Health

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2003-08-25

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0309185548

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Infectious diseases are a global hazard that puts every nation and every person at risk. The recent SARS outbreak is a prime example. Knowing neither geographic nor political borders, often arriving silently and lethally, microbial pathogens constitute a grave threat to the health of humans. Indeed, a majority of countries recently identified the spread of infectious disease as the greatest global problem they confront. Throughout history, humans have struggled to control both the causes and consequences of infectious diseases and we will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. Following up on a high-profile 1992 report from the Institute of Medicine, Microbial Threats to Health examines the current state of knowledge and policy pertaining to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases from around the globe. It examines the spectrum of microbial threats, factors in disease emergence, and the ultimate capacity of the United States to meet the challenges posed by microbial threats to human health. From the impact of war or technology on disease emergence to the development of enhanced disease surveillance and vaccine strategies, Microbial Threats to Health contains valuable information for researchers, students, health care providers, policymakers, public health officials. and the interested public.

Microbial Evolution and Co-Adaptation
Microbial Evolution and Co-Adaptation

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2009-05-10

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0309131219

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dr. Joshua Lederberg - scientist, Nobel laureate, visionary thinker, and friend of the Forum on Microbial Threats - died on February 2, 2008. It was in his honor that the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Microbial Threats convened a public workshop on May 20-21, 2008, to examine Dr. Lederberg's scientific and policy contributions to the marketplace of ideas in the life sciences, medicine, and public policy. The resulting workshop summary, Microbial Evolution and Co-Adaptation, demonstrates the extent to which conceptual and technological developments have, within a few short years, advanced our collective understanding of the microbiome, microbial genetics, microbial communities, and microbe-host-environment interactions.