The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has generated understandable interest in how long viruses can survive outside of a host. Is it a matter of minutes, several hours, a few days? How about 700 years? Remarkably, a new study in PNAS by Ng et al. (1) shows that viruses can survive intact in ice patches for at least this period and retain their infectivity. Ng et al. (1) based their study on...

SENSITIVE TO FREEZING2 (SFR2) is crucial for protecting chloroplast membranes following freezing in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). It has been shown that SFR2 homologs are present in all land plants, including freezing-sensitive species, raising the question of SFR2 function beyond freezing tolerance. Similar to freezing, salt and drought can cause dehydration. Thus, it is hypothesized tha...

Plant freezing tolerance involves the prevention of lethal freeze-induced damage to the plasma membrane. We hypothesized that plant freezing tolerance involves membrane resealing, which, in animal cells, is accomplished by calcium-dependent exocytosis following mechanical disruption of the plasma membrane. In Arabidopsis thaliana protoplasts, extracellular calcium enhanced not only freezing tol...

We have studied spin freezing in the diluted spin ice compound Dy22xYxTi2O7 where the nonmagnetic Y ions replace the magnetic Dy ions on the frustrated pyrochlore lattice. Magnetic ac and dc susceptibility data are presented with an analysis of relaxation times for dilutions of x50, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.4. Site dilution apparently decreases the relative number of spins participating in the icelike f...

Cold-acclimated plants acquire an additional 3-5 degrees C increase in freezing tolerance when exposed to -3 degrees C for 12-18 h before a freezing test (LT50) is applied. The -3 degrees C treatment replicates soil freezing that can occur in the days or weeks leading to overwintering by freezing-tolerant plants. This additional freezing tolerance is called subzero acclimation (SZA) to differen...

The freezing stage governs several critical parameters of the freeze drying process and the quality of the resulting lyophilized products. This paper presents an integrated ultrasonic transducer (UT) in a stainless steel bottle and its application to real-time diagnostics of the water freezing process. The sensor was directly deposited onto the stainless steel bottle using a sol-gel spray techn...

When young plants o f barley and wheat grown in hydroponic culture were subjected to salt stress, their freezing tolerance increased with increasing severity o f salt stress. Detached leaves from salt-stressed plants also exhibited an increased ability to supercool. Avoidance o f ice for­ mation permitted leaf survival at subzero temperatures which were no longer tolerated when ice nucleation r...