microbial ecology

Climate Change and Dengue: How Global Warming Can Affect Your Health

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Hannah Steinberg, Wesleyan ‘16  Climate change has and will have numerous effects on human health. Increased temperature and UV radiation will increase the rate of skin cancer. Rising temperatures, increased atmospheric CO2, and increased ozone concentrations at ground level will intensify the severity of allergies and asthma attacks. Flooding will result in drinking water being contaminated with toxins and … Read more

Rapid Ecological Diversification in Bacillus

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In our last posting, we addressed the controversy over the speed of ecological diversification in bacteria. Some say that ecological diversification is almost a daily process, that every bacterium out there is unique in its ecology; others say diversification is extremely slow, so that we can discover whole swaths of closely related organisms that are ecologically interchangeable. In … Read more