The development of industry and technology, changes in agriculture, trade and global travel, and the adaptation of microorganisms are important factors in the occurrence of emerging diseases. Currently, the world is facing a pandemic caused by an emerging virus called the novel coronavirus (Covid 19) in 2020. This disease led to infect more than one million people worldwide and the death of mor...

ATP bioluminescence monitoring and traditional microbiological analyses (viable counting of total mesophilic aerobes, coliforms and Escherichia coli) were used to evaluate the effectiveness of Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOP) at a university canteen which uses a HACCP-based approach. To that end, 10 cleaning control points (CPs), including food contact surfaces at risk of contami...

In recent years there has been a strong interest in the development of rapid detection techniques of biological species, especially pathogens that are involved in food poisoning, water contamination, and air-borne diseases. Conventional detection methods are time consuming and usually involve overnight culture of bacteria in a suitable growth medium. In this study we used surface-enhanced Raman...

A numerical analysis of mechanical frictionless contact between rough self-affine elastic manifolds was carried out. It is shown that the lower cutoff wave number in surface spectra is a key parameter controlling the representativity of the numerical model. Using this notion we demonstrate that for representative surfaces the evolution of the real contact area with load is universal and indepen...

Plant-derived essential oils (EOs) and oil compounds usually have a relatively high vapor pressure and are capable of reaching microbial pathogens through the liquid and the gas phase. Bioactivity of EOs in the vapor phase makes them useful as possible fumigants for stored commodity protection. The use of edible films as carriers of natural antimicrobials constitutes an approach for external pr...

Modeling of contact interfaces that inherently include roughness such as joints, clamping devices, and robotic contacts, is very important in many engineering applications. Accurate modeling of such devices requires knowledge of contact parameters such as contact stiffness and contact damping, which are not readily available. In this paper, an experimental method based on contact resonance is d...

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) strains are important foodborne pathogens. Among these, E. coli O157:H7 is the most frequently isolated STEC serotype responsible for foodborne diseases. However, the non-O157 serotypes have been associated with serious outbreaks and sporadic diseases as well. It has been shown that various STEC serotypes are capable of forming biofilms on differen...

Floor drains in processing environments harbor Listeria spp. due to continuous presence of humidity and organic substrates. Cleaning and washing activities in food-processing facilities can translocate the bacterial cells from the drain to the surrounding environment, thus contaminating food products still in production. This study evaluated the potential for translocation of Listeria monocytog...