VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV): The public ESO near-IR variability survey of the Milky Way

We describe the public ESO near-IR variability survey (VVV) scanning the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the mid-plane where star formation activity is high. The survey will take 1929 h of observations with the 4-m VISTA telescope during 5 years (2010-2014), covering similar to 10(9) point sources across an area of 520 deg(2), including 33 known globular clusters and similar to 350 open clusters. The final product will be a deep near-IR atlas in five passbands (0.9-2.5 mu m) and a catalogue of more than 106 variable point sources. Unlike single-epoch surveys that, in most cases, only produce 2-D maps, the VVV variable star survey will enable the construction of a 3-D map of the surveyed region using well-understood distance indicators such as RR Lyrae stars, and Cepheids. It will yield important information on the ages of the populations. The observations will be combined with data from MACHO, OGLE, EROS, VST, Spitzer, HST, Chandra, INTEGRAL, WISE, Fermi LAT, XMM-Newton, GAIA and ALMA for a complete understanding of the variable sources in the inner Milky Way. This public survey will provide data available to the whole community and therefore will enable further studies of the history of the Milky Way, its globular cluster evolution, and the population census of the Galactic Bulge and center, as well as the investigations of the star forming regions in the disk. The combined variable star catalogues will have important implications for theoretical investigations of pulsation properties of stars. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Survey of Fungal Contamination on Books in Public Libraries with Mechanical and Natural Ventilation

Libraries are very propitious environments for the growth of fungi. The great concentration of organic material available for these microorganisms, and often with the lack of adequate ventilation or climate control, would favour this situation. This study was conducted in 2003 to determine the predominant genera of fungi in public libraries by a survey of fungi contaminating the upper surface of books, with and without air conditioning in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the winter and summer, during the respective periods with high and low levels of airborne fungi in that city. Six libraries were chosen, located on the campus of the University of Sao Paulo, three of them with air conditioning and the other three with natural ventilation. In these six libraries, 31 genera of fungi were identified in total. The genera and frequency of contaminant fungi recovered differed significantly between the libraries with and without air conditioning and in the samples collected in the summer as opposed to the winter. Cladosporium was the most frequent in the libraries with and without air conditioning, and in the winter. Aspergillus was isolated more often in the summer.