Bacillus licheniformis (ATCC 14580) inhibitory activity against opportunistic fungi

B. licheniformis (ATCC 14580) will exhibit antifungal properties by inhibiting mycelial development when exposed to specific opportunistic fungi as a filtrate. The common soil-dwelling endophytic bacterium B. licheniformis, strain CHM1, has been shown to inhibit growth from several pathogenic fungi. Phytopathogenic fungi (i.e. Fusarium oxysporum, Phytophtora infestans, Penicillium digitatum, etc...) possess the capability to infect and cripple small to large-scale agricultural crop harvesting operations (Wang et al 2009). The development of preventative methodologies and techniques are vital in order to suppress and contain phytopathogenic fungi within agricultural operations. Without preventative methodologies coupled with increasing global populations, agricultural fungal outbreaks could result in local to national-scale economic inflation and hardships

Cultivability and survey of soil mycoflora and microflora from vermicompost and undisturbed sample

Takasato Nakayama's and James Durrell's poster on new techniques in media preparation and isolation techniques necessary to fully take advantage of potential new biotechnology in soil mycoflora and microflora

How Differing Soil Microbial Communities and Dehydration Stress Effect Arabidopsis thaliana Morphological Development

Arabidopsis thaliana was exposed to five different soil treatments: Vermicompost, ‘Food Waste’ Compost, Potting soil (4:1 Promix BX/Perlite), Autoclaved Vermicompost and Autoclaved ‘Food Waste’ compost. Soil treatments A and B were tested for the presence of bacteria using MacConkey and Phenylethyl Alcohol media. All plants were watered on Tuesdays and Fridays and no longer received water after one month. Leaf number, stem height and length of the largest leaf were measured before and after dehydration stress. Once the dehydration stress began, the majority of the plants did not survive with the exception of the vermicompost

The Absence of Soil-dwelling Microflora will Decrease the Fitness of Arabidopsis thaliana in Presence of Opportunistic Fungus such as Penicillium spp.

To support this claim, A. thaliana strain Col-0, was grown in either autoclaved or non-autoclaved soil and in the presence or absence of Penicillium spp. The Penicillium spp. was utilized into a cultural suspension and sprayed at the base of stems of treatments 1 and 3. The culture suspension proved relatively ineffective for the infection of healthy mature plants. However, the suspension did have a minimal effect on young still-developing plants. Autoclaved treatment had a higher mortality rate on juvenile plants than non-autoclaved treatment when suspension was applied. Illustrating that young vascular plants are more susceptible to fungal infection than mature plants

Urban Pollinator Community Abundance and Richness: Bridgeport, Connecticut

James Durrell, Tracy Zarrillo, and Kimberly Stoner's study of the pollinator community in around the University of Bridgeport campus

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. IX. Estimating the Efficiency of Galaxy Formation on the Lowest-Mass Scales

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey has recently determined the luminosity function of galaxies in the core of the Virgo cluster down to unprecedented magnitude and surface brightness limits. Comparing simulations of cluster formation to the derived central stellar mass function, we attempt to estimate the stellar-to-halo-mass ratio (SHMR) for dwarf galaxies, as it would have been before they fell into the cluster. This approach ignores several details and complications, e.g., the contribution of ongoing star formation to the present-day stellar mass of cluster members, and the effects of adiabatic contraction and/or violent feedback on the subhalo and cluster potentials. The final results are startlingly simple, however; we find that the trends in the SHMR determined previously for bright galaxies appear to extend down in a scale-invariant way to the faintest objects detected in the survey. These results extend measurements of the formation efficiency of field galaxies by two decades in halo mass, or five decades in stellar mass, down to some of the least massive dwarf galaxies known, with stellar masses of $\sim 10^5 M_\odot$.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures; published in ApJ July 1st 201

On the unification of dwarf and giant elliptical galaxies

The near orthogonal distributions of dwarf elliptical (dE) and giant elliptical (E) galaxies in the mu_e-Mag and mu_e-log(R_e) diagrams have been interpreted as evidence for two distinct galaxy formation processes. However, continuous, linear relationships across the alleged dE/E boundary at M_B = -18 mag - such as those between central surface brightness (mu_0) and (i) galaxy magnitude and (ii) light-profile shape (n) - suggest a similar, governing formation mechanism. Here we explain how these latter two linear trends necessitate a different behavior for dE and E galaxies, exactly as observed, in diagrams involving mu_e (and also _e). A natural consequence is that the distribution of dEs and Es in Fundamental Plane type analyses that use the associated intensity I_e, or _e, are expected to appear different. Together with other linear trends across the alleged dE/E boundary, such as those between luminosity and color, metallicity, and velocity dispersion, it appears that the dEs form a continuous extension to the E galaxies. The presence of partially depleted cores in luminous (M_B < -20.5 mag) Es does however signify the action of a different physical process at the centers (< ~300 pc) of these galaxies.Comment: 5 pages from the proceedings of the 2004 conference "Penetrating bars through masks of cosmic dust: the Hubble tuning fork strikes a new note". Edited by D. L. Block, I. Puerari, K. C. Freeman, R. Groess, and E. K. Bloc

Bostonia: The Boston University Alumni Magazine. Volume 12

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University’s main alumni publication

Heated Disc Stars in the Stellar Halo

Minor accretion events with mass ratio M_sat : M_host ~ 1:10 are common in the context of LCDM cosmology. We use high-resolution simulations of Galaxy-analogue systems to show that these mergers can dynamically eject disk stars into a diffuse light component that resembles a stellar halo both spatially and kinematically. For a variety of orbital configurations, we find that ~3-5e8 M_sun of primary stellar disk material is ejected to a distance larger than 5 kpc above the galactic plane. This ejected contribution is similar to the mass contributed by the tidal disruption of the satellite galaxy itself, though it is less extended. If we restrict our analysis to the approximate solar neighborhood in the disk plane, we find that ~1% of the initial disk stars in that region would be classified kinematically as halo stars. Our results suggest that the inner parts of galactic stellar halos contain ancient disk stars and that these stars may have been liberated in the very same events that delivered material to the outer stellar halo.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; MNRAS accepte