In-Person Meetings for Day Classes are Cancelled for Thursday, February 6, 2025; Online/remote classes to be held as determined by Faculty.
Thursday's weather forecast calls for snow to arrive in our area at approximately 7 a.m., with snow falling at a moderate rate for 2 or 3 hours before it changes to a brief period of freezing rain and then a changeover to plain rain by early afternoon, ending all together by mid-afternoon. Total snow accumulation is predicted to be 2-3 inches. This will result in hazardous driving conditions.
Due to the storm’s timing and the potential for freezing rain, all in-person day classes on Thursday, February 6, 2025 are cancelled. All scheduled in-person classes beginning before 4 p.m. will transition to being held online or remotely.
Additional information on the virtual format for each class will be provided by the instructor. Any change in the status for Thursday evening's classes beginning at 4 p.m. or later will be announced by 1 p.m. Thursday.
Faculty have been asked to prepare for Online or Remote sessions in the event of in-person meeting cancellations. These options will be determined by the Faculty member and all questions should be directed to the Faculty teaching each course section. Faculty also have been asked to be very understanding and accommodating of the individual situations of their students who may have difficulty managing these alternative online or remote class meetings on short notice.
Please note that only essential employees, as previously determined by their respective department leaders, should report to campus Thursday. All other employees should fulfill the requirements of their role remotely.
Campus operations for residential students, unless otherwise noted, will operate as scheduled, though hours may be modified or changed based on the conditions. Separate messages will be sent from the Peterson Library, the Beckerman Recreation Center, and Dining Services regarding any changes to their normal hours of operation. The Bergami Center for Science, Technology, and Innovation will remain open Thursday for residential students to use for study space and to participate in online classes.
Residential students should be prepared to move their vehicles, if requested, for snow removal operations.
UNH Research Confirms Lyme Disease Bacteria Biofilm in Human Body
Many of the 300,000 patients who contract Lyme disease each year know that curing
it isn’t easy. Often, it seems to recur as soon as the antibiotics are discontinued,
and doctors are reluctant to offer more and more rounds of antibiotics.
February 23, 2016
But now a new study, whose lead author is Eva Sapi, professor and head of biology
and environmental science at the University of New Haven, suggests that the reason
the Borrelia spirochetes that cause Lyme disease are resistant to treatment is because
they form a biofilm in the body that allows it to "hide out" from antibiotics.
That biofilm – which has a very protective layer you might call "slime" – actually
makes the bacteria up to 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than are other
bacteria.
The article is the first to demonstrate the presence of Borrelia biofilm in human
infected skin tissues, confirming that these structures indeed can exist in the human
body published in the European Journal of Microbiology and Immunology, an international,
peer-reviewed online journal. She hopes the work will lead to better therapies for
curing the disease.
"These findings could change the way we think about Lyme disease," she said, "especially
in patients where it seems to be a persistent disease, despite long-term antibiotic
treatment. This recent finding could help to better understand how Borrelia can survive
treatment and elucidation of the biofilm components and will provide novel therapeutic
targets for chronic Lyme disease, with the hope of eradicating Borrelia in these patients."
The work is a follow-up to the 2012 research team’s article in PLOS ONE, another international,
peer-reviewed online publication, which proposed that the observed antibiotic resistance
and reoccurrence of Lyme disease might be due to the formation of an antibiotic resistance
form called biofilm. Since then, the team has focused on actually finding the biofilm
in human tissues. Their latest paper outlines their proof that it indeed exists.
So what exactly is a biofilm?
"A biofilm is a complex aggregation of microorganisms growing on a solid substrate,"
Sapi, who has chronic Lyme disease, said. "Unlike the more familiar free-swimming
bacterial forms, cells in biofilms surround themselves with a complex matrix, better
known as ‘slime,’ to protect the cells from environmental stresses such as the attack
of the immune system or the exposure to antibiotics."
The paper can be found online at
About the University of New Haven
The University of New Haven is a private, top-tier comprehensive institution recognized
as a national leader in experiential education. Founded in 1920 the university enrolls
approximately 1,800 graduate students and more than 4,600 undergraduates.