Early detection of outbreaks and emerging pathogens is critical for public health and global biosecurity. Airports, as major international travel hubs with dense, enclosed populations, are high-risk s...

MIT - Postdoctoral Associate - Cambridge MA 02139

New York has endured significant outbreaks in recent years. Some experts say officials should focus more on risks in plumbing systems, even shower heads.

While fog itself is not alive, researchers found that it can contain an ecosystem, including bacteria that eat pollutants.

I connected with experts to find out where our air quality is headed, and if air purifiers are the breath of fresh air we need.

The Legionnaires' disease cluster on the Upper East Side has grown to 23 cases, the New York City Health Department confirmed Monday.

Intercept is a $500M philanthropic initiative that will catalyze the development and deployment of the technologies needed to radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and eventually elim...

Intercept, a new nonprofit, will focus on countering the common cold and the flu.

The ratio of water to microbial life in fog rivals that of oceans and lakes, new research has found. Sounds gross, but it's actually good news.

A recording from Eric Topol's live video

An outbreak of hantavirus has killed three on a cruise ship. Should you be worried? What to know about the Andes strain, how it spreads and symptoms.

YouTube video by World Health Organization (WHO)

Airborne pathogens pose a significant public health challenge. The ability to detect them efficiently and provide actionable data to mitigate risk in …

The suspected outbreak has led to three deaths and four infections on passenger vessel, the World Health Organization said.

John Seinfeld is one of the most important and influential atmospheric scientists and engineers of the last 60 years. As a young chemical engineering professor, who had just defended his thesis on the...

Postdoctoral Associate: Geostationary measurements of atmospheric chemistry Join us! Our atmospheric chemistry group at the University of Minnesota (UMN) is seeking applications for a Postdoctoral A...

Marr joined Virginia Tech’s “Curious Conversations” to talk about the complexities of airborne pathogens, their impact on health, and a project she’s leading aimed at developing a smart air quality ma...

Upon exhalation, virus-laden respiratory droplets experience rapid changes in environmental conditions that lead to chemical and physical alterations that can affect virus infectivity. By manipulating...

Our understanding of transmission of influenza virus and other respiratory viruses is limited by the difficulty of detecting infectious viruses in aerosol particles. Most aerosol sampling methods are believed to contribute to virus inactivation, but the magnitude of this sampling artifact is unknown. To investigate this question, we aerosolized influenza A virus (IAV) and SARS-CoV-2 suspended in human saliva into a small chamber (3.7 L). Aerosols settled for 10 min onto either cells or a thin layer of liquid medium that was immediately transferred to cells for plaque assay. Aerosols that deposited directly onto cells led to the formation of 100× more plaque forming units (PFU) compared to aerosols that deposited first into liquid medium. Further experiments ruled out uneven aerosol distribution in the chamber or inefficient virus recovery as causes of this discrepancy. These findings indicate that aerosolized IAV and SARS-CoV-2 lost infectivity by approximately 2 log10 PFU within ∼10 min unless they attached to cells quickly. As natural infection via inhalation occurs by direct deposition of the virus onto cells, we hypothesize that sampling directly onto cells more accurately reflects the potential for exposure to lead to infection.

This study demonstrates that aerosolized influenza virus can be safely administered to healthy adults using two modern delivery systems. Controlled aerosol

The centuries-old German practice is trending on TikTok, and for good reason.

Author summary Human-to-human influenza virus transmission under controlled conditions could provide insights leading to better control of epidemics and pandemics. However, a previous study using labo...