Microbiologia i Toxicologia Ambientals Curs 2018-19

Afra Boix, Marc Rubio, Jonathan Serrano i Francesc Vidal Tema: Els determinants ambientals de virus de   la grip aviar   1. Introduction     1.1 Avian flu The flu or influence is an infectious disease, which is produced for influenza virus. The avian influenza was first discovered in free living ducks in 1972. Avian influenza is part of the Orthomyxoviridae group, which is single-stranded RNA virus. When an infected person talk, stress or sneeze and expel the virus to the air the flu viruses are transmitted easily from person to person. It can also be infected with touch surfaces virus contaminated and touching the face after (eyes or nose) without washing your hands properly. There are a vaccine against the flu. That is the better precaution to combate this illness, that is called anti-influenza vaccine, and the resolds depends of the person’s age and the risk. 2.   Body text 2.1 Origin of the avian flu.   The avian flu epid...

EFFECT OF THE MICROBIAL COMMUNITY COMPOSITION ON PLANT-INSECT INTERACTIONS Miquel Alsina, Berta Casal, Irene Costa i Aniol Ventolà INTRODUCTION It exists a big number of microorganism interactions in the ecosystems, which can be beneficial, antagonistic, with physic and biochemical competence or regulated by abiotic and biotic factors.  These interactions have a direct influence in the plant-insect dynamism and they can modify the composition of the microbial communities. That’s why in this article we want to demonstrate the importance between microbial communities and their coexistence with plants and insects, and what’s the effect in the equilibrium in a general ecosystem. Therefore, the bacterial communities can occupy different functional spaces, transforming the atmosphere with their activity and modifying the natural selection pressure, favouring the presence of different organisms.  INTERACTION PLANT-INSECT AND MOCROBIAL COMMUNITY ECOLOGY There are di...

Roger Pallàs Piqué, Lluc Rehues Garreta i Daniel Hernandez Carrasco   INTRODUCTION Plastic is all over us. Probably you can touch some objects made of it just extending your hand from where you are. We use it in a daily basis and we couldn’t imagine a life without plastic since it can be found in a wide variety of products: synthetic textiles, packages, construction materials, toys, pipes, wires or cell phones, and those cases are just examples of an endless list. This proliferation of plastic products, since its introduction on the market at the beginning of the XX century, is mainly due to three characteristics of the material: it has a low cost, it is easy to shape, and it is very resistant. So resistant that it can last for hundreds of years.   Paradoxically, the valuable quality of resistance has become a threat for ecosystems all over the world, mainly the marine ones, due to its accumulation (Vegter et al, 2014). This major environmental issue has ...