There are many reasons for the need to assess rates and quantities of evaporation or evapotranspiration from natural soil surfaces, the surfaces of deposits of mine or industrial waste, or soil-covered waste surfaces. These include assessing water balances for nearsurface soil strata, landfills, tailings dams and waste dumps and suitable deposition or application intervals for hydraulic fill ta...

Environmental dusts settle on surfaces and influence the performance of concentrated solar energy harvesting devices, such as aluminum troughs. The characteristics of environmental dust and the effects of mud formed from the dust particles as a result of water condensing in humid air conditions on an aluminum wafer surface are examined. The dissolution of alkaline and alkaline earth compounds i...

Adsorption of environmentally important aromatic molecules on a water surface is studied by means of classical and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and by reflection-absorption infrared spectroscopy. Both techniques show strong activity and orientational preference of these molecules at the surface. Benzene and naphthalene, which bind weakly to water surface with a significant contribut...

SiO2/TiO2 core/shell beads (T-rex) were designed, fabricated and tested for Raman detection of environmental CO2 under real-working conditions, as those encountered, for example, in solar-to-fuel conversion reactions. The exploitation of light trapping and morphology dependent resonances was crucial for extending the limit of detection of CO2 adsorbed on TiO2 surfaces. T-rex beads allowed for a...

Objective: To investigate contamination of environmental surfaces with human papillomaviruses (HPV) DNA in two genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics and in an on-site staff leisure and fitness centre. Methods: Samples were collected from the treatment rooms and patients’ toilets of two GUM clinics situated at two hospital sites and from the toilets of the staff leisure and fitness centre on one ...

Accurate and rapid detection of Listeria is of significant interest to the food industry. The 3MTM PetrifilmTM Environmental Listeria Plate has been developed in order to provide a Listeria result from environmental samples within 27 to 31 hours. This study compared the Petrifilm Plate method with ISO 11290-2 using PALCAM agar for detection and enumeration of Listeria. Studies of 88 strains dem...

The objective of this study was to find out the impact of environmental conditions on the survival of intestinal parasites on environmental surfaces commonly implicated in the transmission of these parasites. The study was performed by incubating Cryptosporidium and Giardia (oo)cysts on environmentally relevant surfaces such as brushed stainless steel, formica, ceramic, fabric, and skin. Parall...

BACKGROUND Contaminated environmental surfaces may play an important role in transmission of some healthcare-associated pathogens. In this study, we assessed the adequacy of cleaning practices in rooms of patients with Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) colonization or infection and examined whether an intervention would result in improv...

BACKGROUND Although Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is characterized by a risk of nosocomial transmission, the detailed mode of transmission and period of virus shedding from infected patients are poorly understood. The aims of this study were to investigate the potential role of environmental contamination by MERS-CoV in healthcare settings and to define the period of v...