Addressing underestimation of waterborne disease risks due to fecal indicator bacteria bound in aggregates.

Aims: This study aims to identify and address significant limitations in current culture-based regulatory methods used for monitoring microbiological water quality. Specifically, these methods' inability to distinguish between planktonic forms and aggregates containing higher bacterial loads and associated pathogens may lead to a severe underestimation of exposure risks, with critical public health implications.

Methods And Results: We employed a novel methodology combining size fractionation with ALERT (Automatic Lab-in-a-vial E.

Static and dynamic aspects of black silicon formation.

We present a combination of experimental data and modeling that explains some of the important characteristics of black silicon (BSi) developed in cryogenic reactive ion etching (RIE) processes, including static properties (dependence of resulting topography on process parameters) and dynamic aspects (evolution of topography with process time). We generate a phase diagram predicting the RIE parameter combinations giving rise to different BSi geometries and show that the topographic details of BSi explain the metamaterial characteristics that are responsible for its low reflectivity. In particular, the unique combination of needle and hole features of various heights and depths, which is captured by our model and confirmed by focused ion beam nanotomography, creates a uniquely smooth transition in refractive index.