Microbes latest members of the mile-high club

[Guest guest]

Quoting KD Weber <wvadreamin:

 

> ED NOTE: " Spin doctors " at work full swing here ....

>

>

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/098/science/Microbes_latest_members_of_the_mil

e_high_club+.shtml

> Microbes latest members of the mile-high club

>

>

> By Fred Pearce, Globe Correspondent, 4/8/2003

>

> Do bugs control our weather? Can viruses travel for thousands of miles on

> the winds? Is there a whole ecosystem up in the clouds that we have not

> discovered? The answer could be yes to all three questions, according to

> scientists exploring the microbial metropolises in the skies.

>

>

> There is, they say, growing evidence that bacteria, fungal spores, and

> viruses may spend large amounts of time -- even their entire lives -- in

> the air, riding clouds across the planet.

>

> And they don't just inhabit the clouds -- they may also be creating

> them. Certainly many of the clouds' newly discovered inhabitants are

> exquisitely designed to create the maximum number of ice crystals, the

> basic building blocks of clouds. Some Darwinian biologists even argue

> that the bugs may have evolved for this very job.

>

> ''The ecology of the atmosphere is one of the last great frontiers of

> biological exploration on earth,'' says Bruce Moffett of the University

> of East London in England. Late this year, he plans to conduct the first

> systematic bug hunt in the clouds above England.

>

> Until recently, nobody believed that bacteria and viruses spent much

> more time in the air than it takes to sneeze on your neighbor.

> Scientists assumed that if the material got caught up in the winds, it

> would quickly be killed by ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

>

> But Gene Shinn of the US Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Fla., who

> has examined their airborne lifestyle in detail, says the bacteria seem

> to protect themselves from harmful rays by attaching to dust particles.

> In dust clouds, the amount of UV radiation will be lower than in

> ''normal'' situations. And one of Shinn's USGS colleagues, Dale Griffin,

> suggests that bacteria might survive even longer if they get into cracks

> in the particles. They can survive traveling long distances and spread

> disease on arrival.

>

> Shinn has discovered that bacteria and fungi carried aloft on dust

> storms coming out of the Sahel region of West Africa can journey across

> the Atlantic in large numbers. So far, he has isolated more than 130

> species of African bacteria and fungal spores over the Caribbean. Not

> only that, he says that they are probably responsible for a series of

> dramatic epidemics among Caribbean coral reefs in recent years.

>

> One example is an African soil fungus called Aspergillus sydowii. It was

> first spotted in the Caribbean in 1983. That was a year of intense

> African drought. Huge clouds of dust billowed into the upper atmosphere

> and traveled west on the trade winds, forming a dense haze over the

> waters of the Caribbean.

>

> Since those clouds brought Aspergillus sydowii, says Shinn, the fungus

> has killed more than 90 percent of the region's sea fans, a form of soft

> coral. ''Much of the decline in coral reefs in the Caribbean in recent

> years seems to be a result of pathogens transported in dust from

> Africa,'' says Shinn.

>

> Last year, Griffin dramatically raised the stakes when he suggested that

> the 2001 British epidemic of foot and mouth disease may have arrived in

> Europe on winds from Africa.

>

> Griffin noticed that the first case of the disease was reported in

> Britain in February 2001, just a week after satellite pictures had shown

> a huge dust storm carrying sand from the Sahara to Britain. Saharan

> cattle are known to carry the same strain of the virus as turned up on

> British farms.

>

> The evidence is purely circumstantial. But it is not impossible,

> virologists admit. A previous outbreak of foot and mouth in Britain was

> traced to the virus blowing across the English Channel from France. So

> why not a longer journey?

>

> Some researchers believe that bugs do more than hitch a ride in clouds.

> They may make the clouds, too. It turns out that many cloud-inhabiting

> bacteria are brilliantly designed for cloud-seeding: that is, for

> triggering the formation of ice crystals around which water vapor

> coalesces to create water droplets. They do this by producing a protein

> that mimics the shape of an ice crystal's surface, which could help

> growth get started.

>

> Many bacteria seem to be able to form ice crystals, but the best

> equipped appears to be Pseudomonas syringae, which commonly grows on

> plant matter, aiding the decomposition process. A single gram containing

> a million bacteria could theoretically produce up to a million ice

> crystals. It can trigger the formation of ice at temperatures 23 degrees

> Fahrenheit higher than other ''ice nucleators.'' This ability is so

> well-known that the bacteria is sometimes added to the water put into

> snowmaking machines at ski resorts. In the atmosphere, the bacteria

> creates clouds.

>

> All this begs some questions, which Moffett hopes to answer. ''We want

> to discover if it is true that microbes play an active role in forming

> clouds and making rain,'' he says. ''In other words, whether there is an

> active self-sustaining ecosystem up there.''

>

> One intriguing piece of evidence -- barely noticed by scientists at the

> time -- came in research conducted 20 years ago by Russell Schnell of

> the University of Colorado. Trying to find out why western Kenya had so

> many hail storms, he stumbled on the fact that most of the hail stones

> there contained at their heart a scrap of Pseudomonas syringae.

>

> How do the bugs get into the atmosphere in the first place? On land, one

> major route is in smoke from forest and bush fires. Another is dust

> storms. Schnell reckoned the bacteria in his hail stones were stirred up

> by the feet of pickers in the region's tea plantations. On the oceans,

> tiny bacteria and plankton on the water's surface may gain liftoff after

> getting caught in the air bubbles of whitecaps.

>

> And why would bacteria have developed ice-making skills? This is the

> million-dollar Darwinian question.

>

> Most researchers believe the skill developed on the ground to make frost

> that decomposes leaf litter -- thus providing the bacteria with food.

> But why would bacteria living in the tropics retain ice-creating skills

> when temperatures are generally too high for frost formation?

>

> The answer could be in the clouds, where temperatures are cold enough

> for ice formation. What evolutionary benefit might the bacteria gain

> from this? One argument is that the resulting rain helps plants grow,

> and makes more leaves for bacteria down below to eat. But there may be

> another Darwinian purpose, says Tim Linton of the Center for Ecology and

> Hydrology in Edinburgh.

>

> Clouds are an efficient transportation system for the bacteria to spread

> themselves across the planet. Linton and the late William Hamilton, one

> of the world's leading evolutionary theorists, have suggested that cloud

> formation allows the bacteria to travel farther and to be ''rained out''

> back onto the ground.

>

> Much of this is pretty speculative. But whatever the possible motives

> for bacteria to make clouds, one practical spin-off of their skills is

> that scientists might develop more efficient ''organic'' methods of

> seeding clouds, using bacteria instead of chemicals.

>

> That is one reason why agriculturalists and military strategists may be

> taking notice this year when Moffett takes a device rather like a vacuum

> cleaner into the skies to capture and investigate the unknown ecology in

> the clouds of an English summer.

>

> This story ran on page B7 of the Boston Globe on 4/8/2003.

> © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

>

[Guest guest]

Populist revolution ongoing, witnessed by combat

hardened Viet Vet. " Mexico Travel Alert " Attached. Dr

Jim Bowen

--- misty3 wrote:

> Quoting KD Weber <wvadreamin:

>

> > ED NOTE: " Spin doctors " at work full swing here

> ....

> >

> >

>

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/098/science/Microbes_latest_members_of_the_mil

> e_high_club+.shtml

> > Microbes latest members of the mile-high club

> >

> >

> > By Fred Pearce, Globe Correspondent, 4/8/2003

> >

> > Do bugs control our weather? Can viruses travel

> for thousands of miles on

> > the winds? Is there a whole ecosystem up in the

> clouds that we have not

> > discovered? The answer could be yes to all three

> questions, according to

> > scientists exploring the microbial metropolises in

> the skies.

> >

> >

> > There is, they say, growing evidence that

> bacteria, fungal spores, and

> > viruses may spend large amounts of time -- even

> their entire lives -- in

> > the air, riding clouds across the planet.

> >

> > And they don't just inhabit the clouds -- they may

> also be creating

> > them. Certainly many of the clouds' newly

> discovered inhabitants are

> > exquisitely designed to create the maximum number

> of ice crystals, the

> > basic building blocks of clouds. Some Darwinian

> biologists even argue

> > that the bugs may have evolved for this very job.

> >

> > ''The ecology of the atmosphere is one of the last

> great frontiers of

> > biological exploration on earth,'' says Bruce

> Moffett of the University

> > of East London in England. Late this year, he

> plans to conduct the first

> > systematic bug hunt in the clouds above England.

> >

> > Until recently, nobody believed that bacteria and

> viruses spent much

> > more time in the air than it takes to sneeze on

> your neighbor.

> > Scientists assumed that if the material got caught

> up in the winds, it

> > would quickly be killed by ultraviolet radiation

> from the sun.

> >

> > But Gene Shinn of the US Geological Survey in St.

> Petersburg, Fla., who

> > has examined their airborne lifestyle in detail,

> says the bacteria seem

> > to protect themselves from harmful rays by

> attaching to dust particles.

> > In dust clouds, the amount of UV radiation will be

> lower than in

> > ''normal'' situations. And one of Shinn's USGS

> colleagues, Dale Griffin,

> > suggests that bacteria might survive even longer

> if they get into cracks

> > in the particles. They can survive traveling long

> distances and spread

> > disease on arrival.

> >

> > Shinn has discovered that bacteria and fungi

> carried aloft on dust

> > storms coming out of the Sahel region of West

> Africa can journey across

> > the Atlantic in large numbers. So far, he has

> isolated more than 130

> > species of African bacteria and fungal spores over

> the Caribbean. Not

> > only that, he says that they are probably

> responsible for a series of

> > dramatic epidemics among Caribbean coral reefs in

> recent years.

> >

> > One example is an African soil fungus called

> Aspergillus sydowii. It was

> > first spotted in the Caribbean in 1983. That was a

> year of intense

> > African drought. Huge clouds of dust billowed into

> the upper atmosphere

> > and traveled west on the trade winds, forming a

> dense haze over the

> > waters of the Caribbean.

> >

> > Since those clouds brought Aspergillus sydowii,

> says Shinn, the fungus

> > has killed more than 90 percent of the region's

> sea fans, a form of soft

> > coral. ''Much of the decline in coral reefs in the

> Caribbean in recent

> > years seems to be a result of pathogens

> transported in dust from

> > Africa,'' says Shinn.

> >

> > Last year, Griffin dramatically raised the stakes

> when he suggested that

> > the 2001 British epidemic of foot and mouth

> disease may have arrived in

> > Europe on winds from Africa.

> >

> > Griffin noticed that the first case of the disease

> was reported in

> > Britain in February 2001, just a week after

> satellite pictures had shown

> > a huge dust storm carrying sand from the Sahara to

> Britain. Saharan

> > cattle are known to carry the same strain of the

> virus as turned up on

> > British farms.

> >

> > The evidence is purely circumstantial. But it is

> not impossible,

> > virologists admit. A previous outbreak of foot and

> mouth in Britain was

> > traced to the virus blowing across the English

> Channel from France. So

> > why not a longer journey?

> >

> > Some researchers believe that bugs do more than

> hitch a ride in clouds.

> > They may make the clouds, too. It turns out that

> many cloud-inhabiting

> > bacteria are brilliantly designed for

> cloud-seeding: that is, for

> > triggering the formation of ice crystals around

> which water vapor

> > coalesces to create water droplets. They do this

> by producing a protein

> > that mimics the shape of an ice crystal's surface,

> which could help

> > growth get started.

> >

> > Many bacteria seem to be able to form ice

> crystals, but the best

> > equipped appears to be Pseudomonas syringae, which

> commonly grows on

> > plant matter, aiding the decomposition process. A

> single gram containing

> > a million bacteria could theoretically produce up

> to a million ice

> > crystals. It can trigger the formation of ice at

> temperatures 23 degrees

> > Fahrenheit higher than other ''ice nucleators.''

> This ability is so

> > well-known that the bacteria is sometimes added to

> the water put into

> > snowmaking machines at ski resorts. In the

> atmosphere, the bacteria

> > creates clouds.

> >

> > All this begs some questions, which Moffett hopes

> to answer. ''We want

> > to discover if it is true that microbes play an

> active role in forming

> > clouds and making rain,'' he says. ''In other

> words, whether there is an

> > active self-sustaining ecosystem up there.''

> >

> > One intriguing piece of evidence -- barely noticed

> by scientists at the

> > time -- came in research conducted 20 years ago by

> Russell Schnell of

> > the University of Colorado. Trying to find out why

> western Kenya had so

> > many hail storms, he stumbled on the fact that

> most of the hail stones

> > there contained at their heart a scrap of

> Pseudomonas syringae.

> >

> > How do the bugs get into the atmosphere in the

> first place? On land, one

> > major route is in smoke from forest and bush

> fires. Another is dust

> > storms. Schnell reckoned the bacteria in his hail

> stones were stirred up

> > by the feet of pickers in the region's tea

> plantations. On the oceans,

> > tiny bacteria and plankton on the water's surface

> may gain liftoff after

> > getting caught in the air bubbles of whitecaps.

> >

> > And why would bacteria have developed ice-making

> skills? This is the

> > million-dollar Darwinian question.

> >

> > Most researchers believe the skill developed on

> the ground to make frost

> > that decomposes leaf litter -- thus providing the

> bacteria with food.

> > But why would bacteria living in the tropics

> retain

=== message truncated ===

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Thats 5 copies of the same word document you've sent so far,

 

(before my mail box was JAMMED FULL)

 

 

-

" James D. Bowen, MD " <bowendrjim

;

<armageddon-or-newage >

Cc: <health_and_healing >

Friday, April 11, 2003 6:00 PM

Re: Microbes latest members of the mile-high

club

 

 

Populist revolution ongoing, witnessed by combat

hardened Viet Vet. " Mexico Travel Alert " Attached. Dr

Jim Bowen

--- misty3 wrote:

> Quoting KD Weber <wvadreamin:

>

> > ED NOTE: " Spin doctors " at work full swing here

> ....

> >

> >

>

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/098/science/Microbes_latest_members_of_the

_mil

> e_high_club+.shtml

> > Microbes latest members of the mile-high club

> >

> >

> > By Fred Pearce, Globe Correspondent, 4/8/2003

> >

> > Do bugs control our weather? Can viruses travel

> for thousands of miles on

> > the winds? Is there a whole ecosystem up in the

> clouds that we have not

> > discovered? The answer could be yes to all three

> questions, according to

> > scientists exploring the microbial metropolises in

> the skies.

> >

> >

> > There is, they say, growing evidence that

> bacteria, fungal spores, and

> > viruses may spend large amounts of time -- even

> their entire lives -- in

> > the air, riding clouds across the planet.

> >

> > And they don't just inhabit the clouds -- they may

> also be creating

> > them. Certainly many of the clouds' newly

> discovered inhabitants are

> > exquisitely designed to create the maximum number

> of ice crystals, the

> > basic building blocks of clouds. Some Darwinian

> biologists even argue

> > that the bugs may have evolved for this very job.

> >

> > ''The ecology of the atmosphere is one of the last

> great frontiers of

> > biological exploration on earth,'' says Bruce

> Moffett of the University

> > of East London in England. Late this year, he

> plans to conduct the first

> > systematic bug hunt in the clouds above England.

> >

> > Until recently, nobody believed that bacteria and

> viruses spent much

> > more time in the air than it takes to sneeze on

> your neighbor.

> > Scientists assumed that if the material got caught

> up in the winds, it

> > would quickly be killed by ultraviolet radiation

> from the sun.

> >

> > But Gene Shinn of the US Geological Survey in St.

> Petersburg, Fla., who

> > has examined their airborne lifestyle in detail,

> says the bacteria seem

> > to protect themselves from harmful rays by

> attaching to dust particles.

> > In dust clouds, the amount of UV radiation will be

> lower than in

> > ''normal'' situations. And one of Shinn's USGS

> colleagues, Dale Griffin,

> > suggests that bacteria might survive even longer

> if they get into cracks

> > in the particles. They can survive traveling long

> distances and spread

> > disease on arrival.

> >

> > Shinn has discovered that bacteria and fungi

> carried aloft on dust

> > storms coming out of the Sahel region of West

> Africa can journey across

> > the Atlantic in large numbers. So far, he has

> isolated more than 130

> > species of African bacteria and fungal spores over

> the Caribbean. Not

> > only that, he says that they are probably

> responsible for a series of

> > dramatic epidemics among Caribbean coral reefs in

> recent years.

> >

> > One example is an African soil fungus called

> Aspergillus sydowii. It was

> > first spotted in the Caribbean in 1983. That was a

> year of intense

> > African drought. Huge clouds of dust billowed into

> the upper atmosphere

> > and traveled west on the trade winds, forming a

> dense haze over the

> > waters of the Caribbean.

> >

> > Since those clouds brought Aspergillus sydowii,

> says Shinn, the fungus

> > has killed more than 90 percent of the region's

> sea fans, a form of soft

> > coral. ''Much of the decline in coral reefs in the

> Caribbean in recent

> > years seems to be a result of pathogens

> transported in dust from

> > Africa,'' says Shinn.

> >

> > Last year, Griffin dramatically raised the stakes

> when he suggested that

> > the 2001 British epidemic of foot and mouth

> disease may have arrived in

> > Europe on winds from Africa.

> >

> > Griffin noticed that the first case of the disease

> was reported in

> > Britain in February 2001, just a week after

> satellite pictures had shown

> > a huge dust storm carrying sand from the Sahara to

> Britain. Saharan

> > cattle are known to carry the same strain of the

> virus as turned up on

> > British farms.

> >

> > The evidence is purely circumstantial. But it is

> not impossible,

> > virologists admit. A previous outbreak of foot and

> mouth in Britain was

> > traced to the virus blowing across the English

> Channel from France. So

> > why not a longer journey?

> >

> > Some researchers believe that bugs do more than

> hitch a ride in clouds.

> > They may make the clouds, too. It turns out that

> many cloud-inhabiting

> > bacteria are brilliantly designed for

> cloud-seeding: that is, for

> > triggering the formation of ice crystals around

> which water vapor

> > coalesces to create water droplets. They do this

> by producing a protein

> > that mimics the shape of an ice crystal's surface,

> which could help

> > growth get started.

> >

> > Many bacteria seem to be able to form ice

> crystals, but the best

> > equipped appears to be Pseudomonas syringae, which

> commonly grows on

> > plant matter, aiding the decomposition process. A

> single gram containing

> > a million bacteria could theoretically produce up

> to a million ice

> > crystals. It can trigger the formation of ice at

> temperatures 23 degrees

> > Fahrenheit higher than other ''ice nucleators.''

> This ability is so

> > well-known that the bacteria is sometimes added to

> the water put into

> > snowmaking machines at ski resorts. In the

> atmosphere, the bacteria

> > creates clouds.

> >

> > All this begs some questions, which Moffett hopes

> to answer. ''We want

> > to discover if it is true that microbes play an

> active role in forming

> > clouds and making rain,'' he says. ''In other

> words, whether there is an

> > active self-sustaining ecosystem up there.''

> >

> > One intriguing piece of evidence -- barely noticed

> by scientists at the

> > time -- came in research conducted 20 years ago by

> Russell Schnell of

> > the University of Colorado. Trying to find out why

> western Kenya had so

> > many hail storms, he stumbled on the fact that

> most of the hail stones

> > there contained at their heart a scrap of

> Pseudomonas syringae.

> >

> > How do the bugs get into the atmosphere in the

> first place? On land, one

> > major route is in smoke from forest and bush

> fires. Another is dust

> > storms. Schnell reckoned the bacteria in his hail

> stones were stirred up

> > by the feet of pickers in the region's tea

> plantations. On the oceans,

> > tiny bacteria and plankton on the water's surface

> may gain liftoff after

> > getting caught in the air bubbles of whitecaps.

> >

> > And why would bacteria have developed ice-making

> skills? This is the

> > million-dollar Darwinian question.

> >

> > Most researchers believe the skill developed on

> the ground to make frost

> > that decomposes leaf litter -- thus providing the

> bacteria with food.

> > But why would bacteria living in the tropics

> retain

=== message truncated ===

 

 

 

 

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http://tax.

 

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