The Eastland Woolen Mill (EWM), which straddled the East Branch of the Sebasticook River in Corinna, Maine, was listed on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) National Priority List in July of 1999. The site is currently undergoing clean-up activities. The United States Army Corps of Engineers New England District is managing site activities under a cooperative interagency ...

Accurate full-length genomic sequences are important for viral phylogenetic studies. We developed a targeted high-throughput whole genome sequencing (HT-WGS) method for influenza A viruses, which utilized an enzymatic cleavage-based approach, the Nextera XT DNA library preparation kit, for library preparation. The entire library preparation workflow was adapted for the Sentosa SX101, a liquid h...

MOTIVATION Sequencing of matched tumor and normal samples is the standard study design for reliable detection of somatic alterations. However, even very low levels of cross-sample contamination significantly impact calling of somatic mutations, because contaminant germline variants can be incorrectly interpreted as somatic. There are currently no sequence-only based methods that reliably estima...

Inherently, confined animal farming operations (CAFOs) and other intense fecal-rich environments are potential sources of groundwater contamination by enteric pathogens. The ubiquity of microbial matter poses unique technical challenges in addition to economic constraints when sampling wells in such environments. In this paper, we evaluate a groundwater sampling protocol that relies on extended...

........................................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................3 THE NATIONAL MAIZE ECONOMY.............................................................................4 GUATEMALA’S AGRICULTURE AND MAIN MAIZE PRODUC...

INTRODUCTION Advances in screening for infections improve the safety of donated blood. Transfusion-related bacterial sepsis, although not established in Zimbabwe, stills makes bacterial contamination of blood clinically relevant. METHODOLOGY This cross-sectional study was conducted in Harare. Bacteriological and antibiotic susceptibility testing were done using standard methods. RESULTS Of ...

Background and Aims: World Health Organization Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN) plays a critical role in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Cell culture methods (mostly RD and L20B cell lines) have been used for Enteroviruses and polioviruses isolation, respectively. Cross-contamination among L20B and RD cell lines causes the problem in accuracy of poliovirus surveillance and decrea...

SUMMARY Here, we present ContEst, a tool for estimating the level of cross-individual contamination in next-generation sequencing data. We demonstrate the accuracy of ContEst across a range of contamination levels, sources and read depths using sequencing data mixed in silico at known concentrations. We applied our tool to published cancer sequencing datasets and report their estimated contamin...

REFERENCES 1. Council Directive 80/778/EEC [European Economic Community] concerning the quality of drinking water intended for human consumption. July 15,1980. 2. Martin MV. The significance of the bacterial contamination of dental unit water systems. Br Dent J 1987;163:152-154. 3. Williams JF, Huntington MK, Johnston AM. Dental waterlines. A source of contamination. Infection Control and Steri...

Tissue contamination is a common occurrence in pathology, but surgeons are relatively unaware of this. We present the case of a 45-year-old man with Barrett's oesophagus, in which the histology of routine biopsies of an asymptomatic patient, were reported as 'carcinoma in situ'. Further biopsies were taken over a three month period but showed no evidence of malignancy. Tissue contamination or '...