A new, simple, and one-step tool for the direct detection of vancomycin-resistant Enterocococcus (VRE) EPI-V® (Pilots Point LLC, Sarasota, FL) is presented. It contains all the ingredients in a unique stable powder form in a standard test tube. One only needs to add water, inoculate the specimen, and incubate. Specimens consisted of 553 sequential human rectal/perirectal swabs for VRE surveilla...

This paper introduces a new central trapdoor for multivariate quadratic (MQ) public-key cryptosystems that allows for encryption, in contrast to time-tested MQ primitives such as Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar or Hidden Field Equations which only allow for signatures. Our construction is a mixed-field scheme that exploits the commutativity of the extension field to dramatically reduce the complexit...

Fermentation systems are used to provide an optimal growth environment for many different types of cell cultures. The ability afforded by fermentors to carefully control temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen concentrations in particular makes them essential to efficient large scale growth and expression of fermentation products. This video will briefly describe the advantages of the fermentor o...

Microalgal-based wastewater treatment and CO2 sequestration from flue gases with subsequent biomass production represent a low-cost, eco-friendly, effective procedure of removing nutrients other pollutants assists in the decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, it supports circular economy model. This is based on ability microalgae to utilise inorganic nutrients, mainly nitrogen phosphorous, as...

Educational tasks for the development of competencies on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pose a challenge to educators due multidisciplinary and complex nature these goals. It is necessary develop innovative educational resources tools that holistically account this complexity highlight environmental social components goals an equal footing. A learning tool based serious games methodology,...

The plaque assay has long served as the "gold standard" to measure virus infectivity and test antiviral drugs, but the assay is labor-intensive, lacks sensitivity, uses excessive reagents, and is hard to automate. Recent modification of the assay to exploit flow-enhanced virus spread with quantitative imaging has increased its sensitivity. Here we performed flow-enhanced infection assays in mic...

Frozen microtitration trays manufactured by Micro-Media Systems (MMS) for antimicrobial testing of anaerobic bacteria were evaluated and compared with the broth disk elution method of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) described by Wilkins and Thiel. A total of 224 clinical anaerobic isolates were tested. Susceptibility results were compared for carbenicillin, cefoxitin, chloramphenicol, clin...

EXCELLENCE: Worthy goal or dangerous desire? Is excellence a destination or a journey or an attitude? In a world and a society where the expectation is for achievement, success and winning, what should be a Lutheran school’s approach to pursuing excellence? Is excellence about achieving and surpassing standards? Or is it about the process of teaching and learning to the best of one’s ability? O...

Paenibacillus polymyxa WLY78 is a nitrogen fixer and it can be potentially applied to biofertilizer in agriculture. In this study, P. polymyxa WLY78 is labelled with gfp gene. The GFP-labelled P. polymyxa WLY78 is used to inoculate wheat, maize and cucumber seedlings grown in the gnotobiotic system and in soil, respectively. Observation by confocal laser scanning microscope reveals that the GFP...

The estuarine copepod Acartia tonsa naturally carried diverse strains of bacteria on its body. The bacterial community composition (BCC) remained very conservative even when the copepod was fed different axenic algal species, indicating that the food per se did not much affect BCC associated with the copepod. In xenic algal treatments, however, copepod-associated BCC differed with each alga fed...