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peter febb wrote:It's a PR problem. The public needs to be educated as to the major differences between cavers and spelunkers.
On summer days, this natural underground chamber is packed with tourists, but today the scientists have the place to themselves. Clad in disposable white Tyvek suits to avoid tracking microbes into or out of the cave,...
Researchers don’t know when and how the fungus made its way to North America, but they speculate that it may be so-called “pathogen pollution,” the inadvertent human transport of diseases—in this case possibly by a cave-visiting tourist—into new and hospitable habitats.
Bob Thrun wrote:This has to be for show, like the NASA technicians sterilizing a moon probe with ultraviolet light.
If you were going to collect sediments from a cave, and you wanted to maximize the amount of sediment, would you be better off walking on a trail, or crawling on your belly for several hours?
John Lovaas wrote:I should point out that the only likely way that commercial cave tourists could effectively (and, I should clarify, hypothetically) transport spores or microbes from a cave is via the soles of their shoes. And, of all the hypothetical human transport models, it is, clearly the least effective way of doing so.
Bob- I was under the impression that you are still one of the CRF cartographers for Mammoth Cave; would have thought you knew about the bio mats.
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