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2002
Last year's meeting in Fort Pierce was a great success. We had excellent talks on the Friday from Philip Lister, Kenneth Ugen and from Phillip Carter --the topic of Biological Warfare and Urban Terrorism has proved to be highly topical in the light of recent terrorist activities in this country. The Saturday student presentations were all of a high standard and made for interesting discussions. As always the meeting proved to be a great place for microbiologists with diverse backgrounds to come together and dicuss their recent findings. This year the meeting moves to Cocoa Beach on February 15th and 16th. The meeting will take its usual format with invited speakers on the Friday followed by student presentations on the Saturday. The invited speakers include Ian Lipkin from the University of California, Irvine who will be speaking on pathogen discovery, and Ron Jones from FIU who will be speaking on the microbial ecology of the Florida Everglades. There will be a mixer on the Friday evening. Please get your abstracts to me by February 6th--it is the student presentations that make the meeting! The abstract submission form is attached to this newsletter and is also available on our website http://www.asmusa.org/branch/brFl/index.htm Special thanks go to Chris Kellogg for setting up our new look website and for keeping it up to date. (Please contact Chris at MicroOcean@aol.com with an suggestions for improving our web page). Finally, please encourage all of your colleagues to attend the Florida Branch meeting--it is always good to see new faces and to be able to network with microbiologists from other institutions. I'll see you in Cocoa Beach! Peter McCarthy
2001 Annual Branch Meeting The annual meeting of the Florida Branch was held February 23 - 24, 2001 at the Radisson Beach Resort in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Once again we were presented with a wide variety of topics, which included current research being conducted in the fields of clinical and environmental microbiology The centerpiece of Saturday's activities at the branch meeting was the presentation of research by students from around the State. The finest of these were recognized by the presentation of student awards. The first place presentation , and recipient of the Bennett Sallman Award, was Lee Lucas of the University of South Florida, and her talk was entitled "Intra-tumor delivery of plasmid DNA encoding IL-12 by in vivo electroporation results in successful tumor regression." The second place presentation was awarded to Christopher Cote of the University of South Florida. His talk was entitled "A putative antitermination mechanism allows Streptococcus mutans to hydrolyze esculin in the presence of glucose." The presentation awarded third place was that of Valerie Ryan of the Florida Institute of Technology. Her talk was entitled "IHF and HU stimulate initiation of DNA replication from ORIC by different mechanisms." The undergraduate award went to Ping-Jen (Joe) Chou of the University of South Florida who presented "Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) increases GATA-3 mRNA in stimulated splenocytes from mice." All the student presentations were top-notch. Judging presentations for award selection has become quite difficult the last few years as our student members have become more and more versed in the effective use of MS PowerPoint in educating audiences about cutting edge research projects. Congratulations to all for a job wel done. 2002 Branch Meeting Science on the Gold Coast--The 2002 Florida Branch ASM Meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn, Cocoa Beach Oceanfront Resort, 1300 N. Atlantic Avenue, Cocoa Beach, FL 32931 on February 15th and 16th. We have blocked 15 rooms for the meeting and more are available if needed. The phone number for reservations is (321) 783-2271. Be sure to mention that you are attending the Florida Branch ASM Meeting when making reservations. If you have any problems making reservations or need directions, please give me a call or contact me via elm. An ASM Foundation speaker and variety of other guest speakers will conduct presentations on a variety of scientific topics on Friday afternoon (the meeting will start at 1:00pm). Undergraduate and Graduate student presentations will be held on Saturday (the sessions will start at 8:30am). Each student presentation is limited to 10 minutes with an extra 5 minutes for questions. Keep this in mind as this is one of the areas used to judge talks. The Branch will also sponsor a Friday night mixer (6:00pm) and a team volleyball tournament on the beach, so get your teams together and prepare for a fun and interesting meeting (please contact me if your laboratory or organization is interested in fielding a team). Once again Florida Branch ASM funds are available to support undergraduate attendance (travel by car, registration and hotel/food costs). The National Organization has provided funding in support of our initiative to promote undergraduate participation in ASM. Please spread the word to any colleagues who may be interested in sending undergraduates to our meeting. Support is offered to all undergraduates regardless whether they are presenting or not. Any member who wants to sponsor an undergraduate (you may sponsor more than one) should contact me by phone (727-803-8747 ext. 3113) or e-mail (dgriffin@usgs.gov). Please contact me prior to the meeting so that the correct number of hotel rooms can be booked in advance. See you there! Dale W. Griffin
News from the World Health Organization's Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER) 7 December 2001. 76th Year. WHO and UNAIDS report that at the end of 2001 the number of adults and children infected with HIV/AIDs will reach 40,000,000. The estimate for individuals infected in 2001 is 1/8 of the total or 5,000,000 of which 800,000 are children under the age of 15. Approximately 17,600,000 of those infected are women between the ages of 15 and 49. Most of those infected are not aware of their condition. The death toll for the epidemic in 2001 is ~3,000,000. It is the leading cause of death in sub-Sahara Africa and ranked as the 4th leading killer worldwide. From the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Synopsis for December 21, 2001 Evaluation of Bacillus Anthracis Contamination Inside the Brentwood
Mail Processing and Distribution Center — District of Columbia, October
2001
Sampling in October 2001 by CDC investigators and U.S. Postal Service contractors at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, D.C., found widespread anthrax contamination in the facility’s mail processing area. The highest concentrations were identified on, or around, equipment and areas where a letter containing anthrax spores was sorted on its way to the Hart Senate Office Building. The distribution of contamination suggests that anthrax spores were dispersed through aerosolization, and that the use of compressed air to clean a sorting machine may inadvertently have contributed to the dispersal of spores. The investigators found vacuum sampling to be a useful complement to wipe samples for assessing contamination, especially when widespread contamination is suspected. Progress Toward Interrupting Indigenous Measles Transmission — Region
of the Americas, January 2001November 2001
Member countries of PAHO reported 423 measles cases to November 17,
2001 lowing the previous record of 1,754 in 2000. About 31% of these cases
were linked to importation of the disease from other regions in the world.
Dominican Republic and Haiti reported 64% of all cases in the region. This
success is a result of the above 90% measles vaccination routine coverage
achieved among children by 1 year of age since 1999, combined with successful
catch-up and follow up campaigns implemented in the region since 1988.
The Western Hemisphere is close to interruption of endemic transmission
of measles. However, worldwide over 800,000 children die each year from
measles.
CDC investigated a rubella outbreak that occurred in Arkansas from August to October 1999. While rubella usually only causes a mild illness characterized by rash and fever, it may lead to a group of congenital malformations (known as congenital rubella syndrome, CRS) or death in fetuses when contracted during early pregnancy. With the success of the U.S. rubella vaccination program, rubella and CRS are on the verge of elimination in the United States; however, rubella is still endemic in many other countries. This outbreak, comprising 12 confirmed cases of rubella, was mainly concentrated among Hispanic workers at a poultry plant in Fort Smith County, Arkansas. The finding that the majority of rubella cases were found among Hispanics, often employed in the poultry industry, confirms a trend observed throughout the 1990's. Bioterrorism Research Funding Opportunties Innate Immunity
Food Safety
Epidemiological Approaches for Food Safety
Small Business Innovation Research & Small Business Technology
Transfer (SBIR/STTR) Programs: Biotechnology Phase I Solicitation
NIAID Supported Research on Bioterrorism
Partnerships for Novel Therapeutic, Diagnostic and Vector Control
Strategies in Infectious Diseases (RFA)
Small Business Program on Bioterrorism-Related Research
Rapid Response Grant Program on Bioterrorism-Related Research (RFA)
Exploratory/Developmental Grants: Technology Applications to NIAID-Funded
Research (PA)
NIAID Investigator-Initiated Small Research Grants (R03)
U.S.-Based Collaboration in Emerging Viral and Prion Diseases (Contract)
SAIC Anthrax Vaccine (Contract)
Bio-Surveillance System
Community of Science Freedom Funds
For more information on these and other funding opportunities
visit www.asmuse.org/pcsrc/biofundopp.htm
ASM Meetings
Information on a variety of national and international meeting/workshops can be found in the ASM web site --http://www.asmusa.org/ MICROCOMM is published as an annual newsletter of the Florida Branch ASM. Besides meeting announcements, we will endeavor to bring you local branch news and items of interest. We welcome contributions to the newsletter from our members. Anything that you feel would be of interest to other microbiologists in Florida is welcome. Please Send your input to: Dale Griffin, Center for Coastal Studies, U. S. Geological Survey, 600 Fourth Street South, St Petersburg, FL 33701 or e-mail to dgriffin@usgs.gov |
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