Well this is both weird and very interesting: 3D houses “grown” like bones | SmartPlanet. Sort of a combination of 3D printing, bioinspired design, and architecture. Not sure what the future of this is but if they want to have walls that grow / respond to stresses they could consider making them actually alive. Maybe it …
Just a short post here about a new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives “Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Detected at Four U.S. Wastewater Treatment Plants” Unlike some of the stories we rag on about potential pathogens in the built environment (things like “we found E. coli!”), there is a real concern about finding MRSA in …
Not sure what to make of this still but it certainly is a case of microbes in the built environment: Living Concrete Fixes Its Own Cracks With Built-in Bacteria. Not sure why the Malaysian Digest is covering this but it still intrigues me and thought it might be of interest.
(The following is a guest post by James Scott, from the University of Toronto) The receding waters of hurricane Sandy left a trail of destruction along the eastern seaboard of North America – demolishing homes and businesses, flooding neighborhoods and transportation systems, disrupting electricity and water supplies. The havoc wrought by Sandy poignantly affirms the brutal …
For a summary and list of talks from the QIMME/VAMPS Workshop, see here. Below are the various presentation videos that I recorded at the meeting. Mitch Sogin talks about the capabilities of VAMPS: Rob Knight talks about the capabilities of QIIME: Sue Huse discusses best practices in marker gene analysis (must-see for new …