5 ms·
Bacteria can travel thousands of miles through the air on their own
- biggestlou 8y ago*on their own
- codenut 8y agoI believe the title is grammatically correct.
- tlb 8y agoGarner's Modern English Usage recommends the plural form, and cites a 7:1 current usage ratio in favor of plural.
- codenut 8y agoThats interesting. I did not know about that. Can you post the URL of the source?
- tlb 8y agoSadly, it's not online that I know of. Here are pictures of the text: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5sa0m8l9u6211y4/2019-03-26%2019.21.53.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/5sa0m8l9u6211y4/2019-03-26%2019.21... https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwbh9i7a4dcx84g/2019-03-26%2019.22.08.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwbh9i7a4dcx84g/2019-03-26%2019.22... The book [https://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-English-Usage-Garner/dp/0190491485 https://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-English-Usage-Garner/d...] is worth owning.
- codenut 8y agoThis is good stuff. Thanks for sharing. I will consider reading this book.
- dwringer 8y agoAlthough based on that book, with which I agree here, the plural seems unambiguously the preferred term for this article's context, I'm not convinced of the book's examples of incorrect use of the singular form. It seems like in the given examples, the word "bacteria" is treated as singular when referring to a specific strain of bacteria. It seems unwieldy in referring to one particular strain, IMHO, to say "the bacterium that causes <x>", since one typically gets infected by a vast quantity of the individual entities, not just one. Thus I think "the [strain of] bacteria that causes ..." [for one strain] sounds just as natural as "bacteria that cause <x> include <a>, <b>, <c> ..." [referring to multiple strains].
- kenjackson 8y agoThe evidence seems super speculative to me. Is there anything else to corroborate this?
- marshray 8y agoFine dust gets lofted high in the atmosphere. Some bacteria can handle being dried out for long periods and act as fine particles. As I recall, one of the victims of the anthrax terror attacks was a woman who lived several miles downwind of an affected Post Office. But good for these researchers for working out the details, and I'm sure there's a lot more in the paper that didn't make it into the article.
- steve19 8y agoIs one bacteria landing on your tongue, being sucked up your nose or inhaled into your lungs going to do anything? Are there any bacteria and virus that can kill with just one making contact?
- k_sze 8y agoIt’s called “infectious dose”, and it’s largely about probabilities. See this question that I asked a while ago (and associated answers) on Biology SE: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/5442/are-all-known-germs-benign-in-small-enough-quantities-i-e-why-do-we-wash-our-h https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/5442/are-all-kno... EDIT: added missing URL.
- Symmetry 8y agoApparently for Anthrax the LD1, the dose expected to kill 1% of the population exposed to it, is just 1 to 3 spores. So it's possisble that woman downwind of the post office might have just inhaled a single spore. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/infectious-disease-topics/anthrax http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/infectious-disease-topics/anthrax
- ddebernardy 8y ago
- FTA 8y agoLink to the actual study (which the article never provides): https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2018.0092 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2018.009...