We describe a prototype low-cost multi-channel aerosol fluorescence sensor designed for unattended deployment in medium to large area bio-aerosol detection networks. Individual airborne particles down to ~1 m in size are detected and sized by measurement of light scattered from a continuous-wave diode laser (660nm). This scatter signal is then used to trigger the sequential firing of two xenon ...

Early detection of bio-terrorist attacks is an important problem in public health surveillance. In this paper, we focus on the detection and characterization of outdoor aerosol releases of Bacillus anthracis. Recent research has shown promising results of early detection using Bayesian inference from syndromic data in conjunction with meteorological and geographical data [1]. Here we propose an...

To explore associations of exposure to ambient and indoor air particulate and bio-aerosol pollutants with cardiovascular and respiratory disease markers, we utilized seven repeated measurements from 48 elderly subjects participating in a 4-week home air filtration study. Microvascular function (MVF), lung function, blood leukocyte counts, monocyte adhesion molecule expression, C-reactive protei...

Cloud computing opens new perspectives for small-medium biotechnology laboratories that need to perform bioinformatics analysis in a flexible and effective way. This seems particularly true for hybrid clouds that couple the scalability offered by general-purpose public clouds with the greater control and ad hoc customizations supplied by the private ones. A hybrid cloud broker, acting as an int...

Bio-aerosols are airborne particles that are living (bacteria, viruses and fungi) or originate from living organisms. Their presence in air is the result of dispersal from a site of colonization or growth. The health effects of bio-aerosols including infectious diseases, acute toxic effects, allergies and cancer coupled with the threat of bioterrorism and SARS have led to increased awareness on...

The plasmonic properties of noble metal nanoparticles facilitate their use in novel in-vivo bio-applications such as targeted drug delivery and cancer cell therapy. Nanosilver is best suited for such applications as it has the lowest plasmonic losses among all such materials in the UVvisible spectrum. Its toxicity, however, can destroy the surrounding healthy tissue and thus, hinders its safe e...