University of Otago microbiologist Dr Peter Fineran is having an unusually good month, having just gained two research awards, including a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, which comes with $800,000 in research funding.

Dr Fineran (32), who is a senior lecturer in the Otago microbiology and immunology department, spent most of last month overseas, attending two scientific meetings in the United States and visiting a laboratory in the Netherlands.

Since his return to Dunedin, the Royal Society of New Zealand has announced Dr Fineran is the only Otago scientist among ten top researchers throughout the country to gain a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. This will provide him with $800,000 over five years…Read more

Pall Corporation, a leading provider of separation systems and single-use filtration and purification technologies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to support faster development of new drugs and vaccines, has introduced the new compact, easy-to-use Sentino microbiology pump for microbial analysis of aqueous samples using the Membrane Filter (MF) technique. The Sentino pump simplifies filtration while improving contamination control in pharmaceutical, beverage, and environmental water quality monitoring applications.

The Sentino pump streamlines analysis by replacing the traditional vacuum filtration system with a small peristaltic-action pump that draws aqueous samples through a membrane filter. Filtrate is channeled directly to drain or waste collection. The unit’s compact design makes it easy to use in confined spaces and frees valuable benchtop space. It also provides flexibility in arranging workspace for optimal efficiency and workflow.

A soft-touch keypad featuring simple on/off and pulse functions makes it easy to operate, with no complicated programming to validate. Operating parameters are preset and fixed to meet the published requirements for MF Technique as described in US EPA, ISO, and ASTM methods, thereby eliminating the need for extensive validations…Read more

The Chesapeake Bay looks like a dirty bathtub, its waters turned brown with mud and awash in pollution and floating debris, including uprooted trees, propane tanks, even a battered dining-room chair.

Braving boat-damaging hazards, scientists are swarming over the bay to see if the massive stormwater runoff from Tropical Storm Lee last week is going to knock the troubled estuary for another loop, just as it was recovering from an especially rough summer.

“It just doesn’t look right,” Jamie Strong, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said of the malted-milk hue of the water as he and state biologist Zofia Noe cruised north from the Bay Bridge on Wednesday to sample water conditions. Along the way, they dodged partially submerged tree trunks — not always successfully — and skirted sprawling mats of grass and trash atop the water…Read more

Think alginate, that you may have met quite intimately if you’ve had dental impressions made – the gooey, but not sticky substance that was in the tray which formed to match your teeth.  Alginate or more accurately the sodium alginate, the sodium salt of alginic acid, is derived from Macrocystis pyrifera algae, which is also called Giant Kelp or simply brown algae has now been found to apply to lithium-ion battery construction with great results.

Clemson University and Georgia Institute of Technology scientists are reporting in Science Express, a refinement of alginate is a promising new binder material for lithium-ion battery electrodes that not only could boost energy storage, but also eliminate the use of toxic compounds now used to manufacture the components.  In tests so far, it has helped boost energy storage and output for both graphite-based electrodes used in existing batteries and silicon-based electrodes being developed for future generations of batteries…Read more

SPOKANE – The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) is reminding residents of Eastern Washington who live on or near lakes or who visit lakes, to keep children and animals away from blooms of blue-green algae because they can be toxic.

When an algal species reproduces rapidly and reaches high concentrations, it is called an algae bloom. The algae blooms show up every year in many of our lakes and even rivers, often in late summer or early fall when the water is warm, sunshine is abundant and the weather is calm. However, they can occur at any time. Within only a few days, a clear lake can become cloudy.

The problem comes when a bloom produces toxins. Although many blue-green blooms are not toxic, some blue-green algae produce nerve or liver toxins. Toxicity is hard to predict since single species of algae can have both toxic and non-toxic strains.

Some dangerous kinds of algae produce a toxin that is found most often in the scum that people can see on top of the water. Only laboratory tests can confirm whether a bloom is toxic or non-toxic…Read more

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, Sep 14, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — The Algal Biomass Organization (ABO) today announced the agenda for its 5th Annual Algae Biomass Summit, the algae industry’s premier event. More than 800 attendees are expected to see and hear the more than 200 presentations and poster sessions that showcase technological breakthroughs in algae technologies as well as commercial applications in fuels, feed and other products. The event will be held October 24 – 27 in Minneapolis, Minn. at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis hotel…Read more

My parents always collected cep and chanterelle mushrooms and dried them on clothes lines crisscrossing our kitchen. Only when I was in my 20s did I find out that my father made chanterelle schnaps.
When it comes to mushrooms I am very conservative, and stick to the ones I know. For the more adventurous amongst you readers, I recommend attending a course by an expert mushroom hunter first.

What are mushrooms?
They belong to the fungi family like moulds and yeasts and are neither plant nor animal. They form a group of their own. fungi in general are present almost everywhere and they have adapted to many different environments. The mushrooms we eat make up only a tiny portion of the fungi world.
Fungi are not able to produce carbohydrates through photosynthesis and so digest living or dead organic material. They also often form a symbiotic relationship with another species, connecting into their root systems. For example, fungi supply a tree with trace minerals and the tree in return supplies the carbohydrates.
About 85 per cent of all higher plants have a fungal partner. Some of these symbiotic relationships have become very highly specialised so that certain fungi will only grow in the vicinity of certain trees, and in fact often derive their name from that circumstance. The larch bolete and the birch bolete are good examples, as is the field mushroom and the pavement mushroom.
The mushrooms we collect are the fruiting body of the fungi and their primary function is to disperse the spores with which the organism perpetuates itself…Read more

We got a lot of questions from homeowners this year concerning spots on their maple trees and hostas.

The spots on their maple tree leaves are due to a fungal disease known as tar spot, which is a disease caused by several fungi in the genus Rhytisma. Members of this genus also infect silver, sugar, red and Norway maple, and box elder. Although unsightly, the disease is not harmful to the host tree. According to Michigan State University plant pathology specialists, the first tar spot symptoms usually show up in early summer as small (less than 1/8 inch diameter), light-green to yellowish-green spots. The spots enlarge and color intensifies as summer progresses. Small, black, tar-like raised structures form on the upper surface within these yellow spots. The black spots continue to grow in diameter and thickness to the point where it looks like someone splashed tar on the leaves. (This is the time when homeowners become rather alarmed.) Symptoms tend to be more common on trees growing in moist, sheltered locations.

Spraying most trees with a fungicide is usually impractical. The tar spot fungi overwinter in fallen leaves, therefore the best way to manage the disease is to rake and destroy affected leaves in the fall to reduce the number of overwintering organisms that can infest newly emerging leaves the next spring. Neighbors should also rake and destroy their infected leaves in order for your management efforts to be effective. Mulching leaves will destroy many of the spots before they mature if the mulch pile is covered or turned before new leaves begin to emerge in the spring…Read more

My first ever encounter with a truffle occurred age six, somewhere in the Jura Mountains of France. My brother and I had pooled our pocket money to buy my father a birthday present. We settled upon a small Périgord truffle in oil, sealed in a shot glass. I had no idea what a truffle was, but understood this: they weren’t cheap. Quite why we had paid 25 francs for something that resembled an oversized, warty bogey in a jam jar was beyond our comprehension, but my mother assured us it was worth it for the exquisite taste, a flavour I would have to wait quite a few years to see if it really was worth it’s weight in gold.

Now, while looking for mushrooms above ground can be difficult even when you’re bang in the middle of a good cep season, trying to root out a subterranean fungus, relying on only a few pointers and perhaps the assistance of a creature with a keener sense of smell than you or I, is a completely different kettle of fish altogether. I had always disregarded truffles as something I was never going to find in the UK, until last autumn when I began to hear mutterings in and around Sussex of the South Downs having a rich history of truffle hunting, though sadly many of these fellows in the know have died and taken their knowledge and locations of the wild-truffle orchard with them…Read more