Browse Articles

Detection and Control of Spoilage Fungi in Refrigerated Vegetables and Fruits

Chari et al. | May 16, 2021

Detection and Control of Spoilage Fungi in Refrigerated Vegetables and Fruits

Food spoilage leads to a significant loss in agricultural produce each year. Here, the authors investigate whether certain essential oils can protect against fungus-mediated spoilage of fruits and vegetables. Their results suggest that the compounds they tested might indeed inhibit fungal growth, at various temperatures, a promising result that could reduce food wasting.

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Machine learning on crowd-sourced data to highlight coral disease

Narayan et al. | Jul 26, 2021

Machine learning on crowd-sourced data to highlight coral disease

Triggered largely by the warming and pollution of oceans, corals are experiencing bleaching and a variety of diseases caused by the spread of bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Identification of bleached/diseased corals enables implementation of measures to halt or retard disease. Benthic cover analysis, a standard metric used in large databases to assess live coral cover, as a standalone measure of reef health is insufficient for identification of coral bleaching/disease. Proposed herein is a solution that couples machine learning with crowd-sourced data – images from government archives, citizen science projects, and personal images collected by tourists – to build a model capable of identifying healthy, bleached, and/or diseased coral.

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Evaluating the antimicrobial activity of maitake mushroom extract against Staphylococcus epidermidis

Shamsudeen et al. | Oct 06, 2024

Evaluating the antimicrobial activity of maitake mushroom extract against <i>Staphylococcus epidermidis</i>
Image credit: Guido Blokker

Here, seeking to explore new antimicrobial therapies, the authors investigated the antimicrobial activity of Maitake mushroom extract against Staphylococcus epidermidis, a common cause of antibiotic resistant hospital-acquired infections. They found that Maitake extract showed potent antimicrobial activity, with higher concentrations showing inhibition comparable to tetracycline.

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Implications of various pure tones on Phaseolus vulgaris and Gaultheria shallon

Judit et al. | Jul 13, 2026

Implications of various pure tones on <i>Phaseolus vulgaris</i> and <i>Gaultheria shallon<i>

This study investigated how different sound frequencies (0, 1,000, 5,000, and 15,000 Hz) affect the growth of Phaseolus vulgaris and the transpiration rates of Gaultheria shallon. Although some differences in plant growth were observed, the authors found no consistent evidence that sound frequency enhanced overall growth or transpiration, highlighting the need for further research.

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